ASIA MARKETS: Japan Stocks Rise, But Data Weigh On Hong Kong

By Chao Deng and Bradford Frischkorn

Stocks in Tokyo rose for a fifth-straight session Wednesday as the U.S. dollar marched higher, although shares of SoftBank Corp. slumped after the Japanese Internet conglomerate disappointed investors by cutting its profit forecast.

The U.S. dollar(USDJPY) rose above the Yen114 mark after news that U.S. Republican Senate candidates won sweeping victories in midterm elections, further bolstering political opposition to President Barack Obama in Congress. The currency had been at Yen113.61 late Tuesday in New York and has been strengthening since mid-October, a positive for Japanese exporters who make profit abroad in dollars. Check out MarketWatch's election blog recap

The Nikkei Stock Average added 0.4% to 16,937.32, accumulating a gain of 10% over its latest four sessions, although most of those gains came Friday and Monday after Bank of Japan's massive stimulus move.

"Last week's unexpectedly aggressive Bank of Japan easing action, combined with the Government Pension Investment Fund's stock-heavy allocation shift, has been a game changer for equity markets, raising the floor for stock values," says Norihiro Fujito, senior investment strategist at Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities. "Still, some profit-taking is eventually going to offset the new buying that takes place."

Lagging the market was SoftBank , whose shares lost 2.3% after worse-than-expected results at its U.S. subsidiary Sprint Corp (S) left it to cut its profit outlook. Still, SoftBank reported a quarterly net profit of Yen483 billion ($4.26 billion), nearly triple its year-earlier figure. That result also included a Yen563 billion gain from the firm's more than 30% stake in China's Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. (BABA), which reported its first results as a U.S.-listed company on Tuesday.

Stocks were mostly lower in the rest of Asia.

Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index , down 0.6%, led losses, after HSBC reported that a gauge on services activity in China fell to 52.9 in October from 53.5 in September. It was the second straight month of deterioration and latest sign of slow growth in China.

The Shanghai Composite Index fell 0.1% to 1353.12, its first drop in seven days.

In Hong Kong, PetroChina slumped 2.5% to HK$9.36 as Brent crude hits a four-year low of $81.87.

Singapore's Strait Times was last up 0.2%. The local stock exchange reopened late in the day after the exchange's operator halted trading in securities and derivatives without stating a reason for the disruption.

Heavyweight Korean exporters continued to bleed losses amid worries that Japanese competitors would benefit from a weakened Japanese yen. Samsung Electronics Co. and Hyundai Motor Co. were down 1.2% and 2.6% respectively.

In Japan, Nissan Motor gained 2.1% after the firm's second-quarter results beat the street consensus. Management didn't change its full-year guidance despite raising its second-half currency assumptions to USD/JPY 105 from 100.

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