JAPAN MARKET DESK · AFTER TOKYO, BEFORE THE NEXT OPEN
Tokyo stocks gained Thursday on chip-related buying, then fell sharply by Friday midday as U.S. AI worries and the Bank of Japan decision reset expectations.
This is market journalism, not investment advice.
Facebook ShareData checked: 2026-10-30 13:30 JST / 2026-10-29 21:30 PDT
October 29 was helped by buying in chip-testing and related companies after earnings upgrades, together with a more settled mood following the U.S. Federal Reserve’s rate hold. The reversal on October 30 began with the U.S. Nasdaq’s roughly 1.37% fall on October 29 as investors reassessed the scale and near-term payoff of AI capital expenditure.
It would be inaccurate to attribute the whole Tokyo selloff to the BOJ decision: Japanese stocks were already falling before that announcement. The subsequent debate about inflation and the BOJ’s ETF unwind added to the policy backdrop rather than replacing the global technology story.
Advantest (6857) was the clearest bridge between the two sessions. On October 29 its shares finished at ¥37,030, up 6.01% on public historical pricing after an upgraded outlook helped lift interest in semiconductor-test equipment. At 10 a.m. October 30, public market reporting calculated that its decline alone was subtracting roughly 641 points from the Nikkei.
Better corporate forecasts and falling share prices are not contradictory: when investors have already priced in exceptional AI growth, a global re-rating can overwhelm company-specific good news. Mover confidence: High for the observed price move and index contribution; individual trading motives cannot be proved.
At 10 a.m. October 30 the Prime Market had 860 gainers against 643 decliners even as the Nikkei was sharply down. That apparent contradiction shows the power of price-weighted heavyweights: airlines, shipping, other products and retail were relatively firm, while nonferrous metals, electrical machinery and glass/ceramics lagged. These were 10 a.m. sector observations, not a full-session ranking.
USD/JPY was around ¥157.83 late in Tokyo on October 29 and near ¥157.66 early October 30. Public reports described yen buying into the low ¥157s after the BOJ decision. A weaker yen can assist exporters’ translated earnings, but it also raises the local cost of imported fuel, food and travel. FX and cash-equity observation clocks differ; no same-time close is implied here.
An early October 30 public reference put the 10-year JGB yield around 2.84%; it is not represented as a 1:30 p.m. quote. The BOJ held its policy rate at 1.25% while lifting inflation projections. Higher yields can improve banks’ lending spreads in some circumstances, but also affect bond valuations, mortgages and companies’ funding costs.
At the requested 1:30 p.m. Tokyo cutoff, Tokyo cash equities were still trading. Europe’s October 30 cash session and the regular U.S. session had not yet begun, so their outcomes cannot be reported. The last available U.S. close was October 29: the Dow at 52,342.56 (down 132.54) and the Nasdaq at about 26,184.73 (down roughly 1.37%). Europe’s response, U.S. chip stocks, Treasuries and the yen are a forthcoming handoff, not an observed one.
On October 30 the Bank of Japan held its short-term policy rate at 1.25% by an 8–1 vote. Board member Hajime Takata proposed a rise to 1.50% but was outvoted. Public reporting of the outlook showed the fiscal-2027 core inflation forecast raised to 2.6%. The BOJ also reportedly approved faster ETF disposals, at about ¥860 billion a year in book value from January 2027.
The hold and the forward-looking inflation signal are different messages. Governor Kazuo Ueda’s later news conference is beyond this report’s cutoff and is not anticipated here.
Yesterday a Japanese chip-testing champion helped lift the index. Today the same company became a major drag. Japan did not lose its engineering capabilities overnight; what changed was the price investors were willing to pay for expected growth. The household consequences of inflation, import costs and financing do not reverse so quickly. Our job is to keep both stories in view.
Compiled from publicly accessible index-provider closes, intraday observations, central bank materials and public market reporting. No subscription-only articles were copied. Numbers at different timestamps are not treated as synchronized. This is not investment advice.
