Nikkei Plunges Over 1.5% As Strong Yen Hits Exporters

Tokyo stocks opened lower Monday as exporters tanked on a surge in the yen after last week's shockingly weak US jobs data, which heightened worries about lacklustre international growth. 

The smallest monthly job creation tally in nearly six years caught the Federal Reserve off guard after officials had repeatedly said a June or July interest rate increase was in the cards, analysts said. 

The US added only 38,000 net new positions in May, a quarter of the amount expected, data on Friday showed, effectively ruling out a Fed rate rise later this month. 

"The market had been taking an optimistic view that even if we see a US rate hike in the coming few weeks, the economy was brisk enough to withstand it," Yoshinori Ogawa, a market strategist at Okasan Securities, told Bloomberg News. 

"But now we see that there's a gap between the actual economy and what the market was thinking... There's really no reason to buy Japanese stocks at the moment." 

At the start, Tokyo's benchmark Nikkei 225 index dived 1.62 percent, or 268.91 points, to 16,373.32, while the broader Topix index of all first-section shares lost 1.49 percent, or 19.90 points, to 1,317.33. 

On currency markets, the dollar ticked up to 106.73 yen from 106.63 yen Friday in New York. But the greenback was still down about two percent from 108.88 yen on Thursday after the US jobs report slammed the US currency. 

A stronger yen is bad for Japanese stocks as it shrinks the value of exporters' repatriated profits. 

In share trading, Toyota slumped 2.37 percent to 5,540 yen and Nissan was 2.87 percent off at 1,047 yen. 

Banks also fell, with giant Mitsubishi Financial Group down 2.89 percent at 515.8 yen and rival Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group tumbling 2.75 percent to 3,317 yen. 

Energy explorer Inpex slumped 3.01 percent to 840.8 yen, while refiner JX Holdings edged 0.18 percent lower to 423.8 yen.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)