Nikkei steadies

The Nikkei average held on to recent gains on Wednesday, edging up for the second session and brushing off worse-than-expected earnings from blue chips like Honda Motor Co, with some market players saying earnings gloom has already been priced in.
Optimism about Japanese equities and hopes for a better-than-expected recovery in the United States pushed the Nikkei to a 4.1 percent gain last month, its best January performance since 1999.
"There is a lot of delayed investment. And there were a lot of reasons to delay investing, what with the worries about the third-quarter earnings, the remaining concerns about the European debt negotiation," said Stefan Worrall, director of equity cash sales at Credit Suisse in Tokyo.
A Reuters poll showed that while Japanese fund managers cut their global stock weighting in January as worries about Europe persisted, they raised their weighting for Japanese stocks to a seven-year high, seeing them as relatively attractive.
The benchmark Nikkei edged up 0.1 percent to 8,809.79, still below its 200-day moving average around 9,082. The broader Topix index advanced 0.4 percent to 757.96.
The Nikkei's 25-day moving average looked likely to break above its 75-day average this week to form a "Golden Cross," a bullish technical sign for stocks.
But strategists cautioned against drawing quick conclusions, saying that a more important focus should be on whether the Nikkei can maintain its current momentum and remain above the 25-day average.
Trading volume improved on Wednesday, with 2.15 billion shares changing hands on the main board, ticking up from 2.07 billion shares on Tuesday.
With corporate earnings season well under way, market participants said the impact of last year's natural disasters in Thailand and Japan were within expectations.
Out of the Nikkei companies that have reported quarterly figures so far, 63 percent have come in below market expectations, according to Thomson Reuters StarMine data. That compares with 36 percent of S&P 500 companies.
But there were strong gainers, including All Nippon Airways, which jumped 6.8 percent after it hiked its operating profit forecast by nearly 30 percent.
Honda, trading at 50 percent above its average 30-day full day volume, slashed its annual profit guidance to 200 billion yen ($2.6 billion), its lowest level in three years, hurt by the cost of natural disasters and a strong yen.
But in an indication that the market was beginning to take these type of earnings figures in its stride, Honda's stock ended up 0.3 percent after falling as much as 2.8 percent in early trade.
Japan's banking subindex advanced 1.5 percent, with Mizuho Financial Group gaining 0.9 percent .