RTRS: Nikkei down in lacklustre trade, weighed by yen
* Nikkei down on profit-taking after 7.6 pct rise last week
* Trade thin, attention on U.S. jobs data, Big 3 plans
* Lagging start to U.S. Christmas sales weighs on market
* Yen edges up on dollar, euro but off earlier highs (Adds stocks, details)
By Elaine Lies
TOKYO, Dec 1 (Reuters) - Japan's Nikkei average lost 1.4 percent on Monday, with high tech shares such as Advantest Corp (6857.T: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) down on profit-taking as trade thinned on investor fears about U.S. jobs data due out later this week.
Honda Motor Co (7267.T: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) shed 2.9 percent after a top executive at the car maker said it would have a tough time meeting its lowered annual profit forecasts due to an increasingly severe sales environment. [ID:nT186150] Market players said that few investors were willing to brave this week's uncertainties, including a raft of U.S. indicators culminating in jobless figures on Friday. There is also speculation over whether the struggling Big Three U.S. automakers will win government financial support. "With potential bombshells like these ahead, nobody wants to buy now, even though this might be a good time to do so," said Masayoshi Okamoto, head of dealing at Jujiya Securities.
"World market moves these days all centre on what happens on Wall Street, and these issues -- the jobless data and Big Three plans -- have the potential to provoke large share moves."
Early results from the Black Friday weekend marking the start of the Christmas shopping season in the United States showed that sales grew in shops and online, fuelled by repeat trips and deep discounts.
But an early rush is unlikely to save what is shaping up to be a bleak sales season, analysts said. [ID:nN30476271]
"The bad start to the season might not have much direct impact on Japanese companies, but there's no question that it contributes to poor sentiment," said Nagayuki Yamagishi, a strategist at Mitsubishi UFJ Securities.
The benchmark Nikkei .N225 shed 115.05 points to 8,397.22, while the broader Topix .TOPX lost 0.9 percent to 827.47 in extremely thin trade.
Market players noted that activity has fallen off in the wake of holiday and shortened sessions in the United States late last week, with a lack of major Japanese company news for the weeks ahead also inhibiting activity.
"There's very few factors to trade on right now, but then in January there could be a lot of downward revisions by Japanese companies," said Yamagishi to explain the lack of active buying.
TECH TROUBLES
The yen is seen edging higher over the longer term, and this too will serve to limit gains by the Nikkei, which is heavily weighted towards exporters. The dollar was fetching 95.20 yen in late Tokyo trade
Some of the hardest hit stocks on Monday were high tech shares which had risen last week, as investors moved to lock in profits.
Advantest shed 3.1 percent to 1,204 yen, while industrial robot maker Fanuc (6954.T: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) lost 2 percent to 5,770 yen and Kyocera Corp (6971.T: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) fell 1.7 percent to 5,860 yen.
There was more bad news for Japanese automakers, hit hard by the slowing overseas economies.
Automobile sales in Japan, excluding 660cc minivehicles, fell 27.3 percent in November from a year earlier to 215,783 vehicles, the Japan Automobile Dealers Association said on Monday.
Honda slid to 2,025 yen and Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) fell 1.8 percent to 2,945 yen. Suzuki Motor Corp (7269.T: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) lost 8.1 percent to 1,183 yen.
But NTT DoCoMo Inc (9437.T: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) bucked the general trend after the Nikkei business daily reported that Carlyle-controlled [CYL.UL] firm Willcom Inc will launch low-priced mobile data services using DoCoMo's network in early 2009 under an arrangement called mobile virtual network operator.
Brokerages Credit Suisse and UBS hiked their earnings forecasts for the company, with Credit Suisse analyst Hitoshi Hayakawa saying a bigger-than-expected fall in mobile phone sales is likely to reduce subsidy costs and boost DoCoMo's profit.
NTT DoCoMo gained 3.7 percent to 164,100 yen. Trade fell off, with 1.51 billion shares changing hands on the Tokyo exchange's first section compared with last week's daily average of 1.84 billion.
Declining stocks outpaced advancing ones by more than 2 to 1.
