Foreign investors sold a record amount of Japanese stocks last week, exchange data showed, led by heavy selling of futures that analysts attributed largely to short-term investors as the benchmark index posted its biggest weekly drop in nine months. Worries about the Greek debt crisis and China's stock market rout weighed on Japan's benchmark Nikkei average, which slipped to a three-month low during the week before ending with a weekly loss of 3.7 percent.
Foreign investors last week sold a net 438.2 billion yen ($3.54 billion) in cash stocks and 1.15 trillion yen in futures, including contracts linked to the Nikkei and Topix indexes, data from the Tokyo Stock Exchange and the Osaka Securities Exchange showed on Thursday.
That was foreigners' largest net weekly selling of stocks in the combined cash and futures markets since the exchanges started publishing the data in 2005, said Masaki Motomura, equity strategist at Nomura Securities. The Nikkei has climbed more than 4 percent so far this week, however, and analysts said short-term investors appeared to be climbing back into the market. "Short-term investors typically increase their positions after a pullback and I think it's already happening this week," said Shingo Kumazawa, equity analyst at Daiwa Securities.