Nikkei index suffers worst quarterly performance in a year

Japanese Nikkei index ended the last trading session of a turbulent week with a slight decline today, Friday, and oscillated between rise and fall during the session, thus recording the worst quarterly performance since mid-2022.

According to Reuters, the sale of shipping company shares after the right to distribute cash dividends ended, and the decline in energy company shares, which followed the fall in crude oil prices, erased the effect of gains achieved by chip company shares and shares of companies that rose after their Wall Street counterparts rose overnight. ‎

The Nikkei fell 0.05%, recording 31,857.62 points, bringing the index’s weekly losses to 1.68%. As for the broader Topix index, which does not focus as much on technology company stocks, it fell 0.92% for the day and 2.23% for the week.

The Nikkei index lost more than 4% this quarter, the first quarterly decline since last September and the largest since the previous June.

The index reached its highest level since the beginning of the 1990s, recording 33,772.89 points in mid-June, and has declined by about 5% since the most recent peak in the middle of this month.

Shipping company shares, which pay the highest cash dividends among Japanese stocks, fell 4.38%, becoming the worst performers by a large margin among all 33 sub-sectors of the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Shares of oil and coal companies fell 2.92%

On the Nikkei index, shares of technology companies represented the only bright spot in performance, and shares of major semiconductor companies enabled the index to avoid a greater decline.