for the details on tokyo stocks ramin mellegard joins us. he has a full update for us.there, what can you tell us? >> thank you very much. lower crude oil price weighed on wall street and that gave a weak signal for tokyo stocks as well. so let's have a look at how the wednesday morning session wrapped up. the nikkei at 16,901 down just over 1% and the broader topix, 1,362 down 0.86%. amid the diminished risk appetite, investors are taking a risk off stance in the financial markets especially in the energy and metal sectors. cosmo oil, showa shell, suffered and some japanese trading companies as well which specialize in energy-related products such as itochu also trading down over 2%. as crude oil price fall and growth in china remains a concern also focusing on shares in the construction sector. heavy machinery makers down 1.43%. and the yen also gaining against the dollar during tokyo hours which weighed on exporters here. the blue chips coming up now. nintendo and mazda motor weighing on the nikkei. talking about currencies, let's have a look at the key dollar/yen pa

for that we go to ramin mellegard who has all the details on the main move. hi ramin, what do you have for us? >> investors are taking a chance to book some profits ahead of the key european central bank policy meeting on thursday. let's look at how the morning session wrapped up for the nikkei and the broader topix. both in the negative. and the broader topix, 1,391. excuse me. so after having posted its best trading session in over a month on tuesday, investors are take the opportunity to book profits and sell shares. investors may be a bit hesitant to make any further moves until the key central bank meetings are out of the way. some of the blue chip exporters i was following today, toshiba, sharp and panasonic are dragging the nikkei lower. other sectors gained some of the airline stocks after that continued weakness we are seeing in the crude oil prices. ana holdings and japan airlines are among the gainers there. and that is after positive earnings from u.s. carriers such as delta and that's following the earnings reports there. we saw continued optimism

ramin mellegard has all the details for us. hi there, ramin. what did you see this morning?> well ai following the gains we saw on wall street tokyo stocks also got a bit of a lift here especially after having recently been sold off. let's see how the morning wrapped up for the nikkei and toings. 17,255. up half a point for the nikkei. and the broader topix up a quarter of 1%. we saw shares rise in fast retailing. the operator of unionqlo stores says it jumped 65% in the quarter ending in november. one of the fastest shares on the nikkei accounting for about 10% of the retailing. so any movement in fast retailing tends to sway the nikkei. other retailing sector shares also seven & i holdings up 0.4%. it's going to come up with earnings after the close today. a big focus on the retail sector. other tech and consumer electronics shares also trading higher. we were tracking a few of them. nintendo and sony. also in the auto sector the likes of nissan honda, and toyota gaining as well as you can see there. some steam was taken out of the transport sector after a rebound in crude

ramin mellegard has the update. what do you have for us? >> thank you very much. and despite the declines on wall street investors here went out shopping for some bargains, really. and then the slight fall in the yen boosting a lot of the exporters. let's look at the morning session. 17,041 up 1.46%. and the topix, 1,373 up just over 1%. we saw investors snapping up blue chip and tech exporters with sony toyota and canon among some of those gaining today. but we saw a rebound in energy related shares there after 5% pop higher for west texas intermediate crude and brent cruise on wednesday. inpex was up 3.69%. but from the financial sectors we saw some declines. nomura holdings was one of the biggest decliners there after poorer than expected earnings from j.p. morgan chase. now let's switch to currencies. the dollar/yen has been a big focus. we saw a slight rebound in the dollar during tokyo trading today especially after it dips to lower 116 levels for the first time in a month. right now 117.71-72. i want to highlight the australian dollar. it jumped against the

let's go to ramin mellegard who has an update on the latest moves. what can you tell us? >> with investors waiting for that meeting the tone of the markets has been a little bit mixed. the nikkei was trading in and out of positive and negative territory. but let's look it the closing levels 17,262 down .10%. and the topix down almost a half percent. the mixed reception for the exporters as the dollar bounced up and down. so some of the big exporter names were trading lower. i was tracking the likes of bridgestone, canon as well as mazda. toyota trading lower as car makers says it expects slower sales this year due to sluggish sales domestically. toyota down .5%. sony was a focus but bucking the trend after it announced early retirement plans for some of its work force and investors took that as a positive that sony would restructure its business. sony up .2%. with all eyes on the ecb meeting a lot of eyes on currency trading. starting with the dollar/yen. 118.25-27. and it's been trading in a bit of a range here. slightly higher than earlier but not such a big move. the e