TOKYO: Japanese shares fell on Thursday, tracking a sharp decline on Wall Street overnight, with technology heavyweights leading the slide.

The Nikkei share average fell 0.84% to 25,992.68 by the midday break, while the broader Topix was down 0.28% to 1,846.05.

“It was hard to bet on Japanese stocks after the Nasdaq’s fall overnight,” said Shigetoshi Kamada, general manager at the research department at Tachibana Securities.

“As long as the Federal Reserve maintains its policy tightening, investors will remain cautious about investing in risk assets.”

US stocks ended sharply lower overnight, with the Nasdaq dropping more than 3% and the Dow falling for a fifth straight day after inflation data did little to ease investor worries over the outlook for interest rates and the economy.

Technology investor SoftBank Group tanked 6.25%, dragging the telecommunication sector 2.64% lower to make it the worst performing sector.

Japanese shares track Wall St strength

Phone companies KDDI fell 1.74% and SoftBank slipped 4.99%.

Chip-related stocks Tokyo Electron and Advantest fell 1.17% and 2.11%, respectively. Medical services platform M3 tumbled 8.25%.

Toyota Motor, which flagged annual profit declines, reversed its course to rise 0.48%.

The stock has lost more than 8% this week, underperforming the Topix’s 3.64% loss.

Olympus surged 10.91% after the endoscope maker flagged a jump in its annual profits.

There were 116 advancers on the Nikkei index against 104 decliners.

The volume of shares traded on the Tokyo Stock Exchange’s main board was 0.72 billion, compared with an average of 1.22 billion in the past 30 days.