Nikkei ends above 10,000 for first since March 11 quake

Tuesday, 3 May 2011 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

TOKYO, (Reuters) - Japan's Nikkei stock average on Monday closed above the closely watched 10,000 mark for the first time since the March 11 earthquake on optimism that Wall Street shares would rally after U.S. officials said al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden had been killed.

Sentiment was also bolstered by better-than-expected earnings from construction machinery maker Caterpillar , with rival Komatsu Ltd making strong gains while Sony

Corp advanced after it said some PlayStation network services would resume following the theft of personal details on 78 million user accounts.

But investors were nervous about building large positions ahead of with Japan's "Golden Week" holiday from Tuesday to Thursday and ahead of more corporate earning results and U.S. economic data, including closely watched jobs data on Friday.   "The market jumped above 10,000 on the bin Laden news. Overseas shares could rise further on this news, but we didn't want to take large positions ahead of more holidays here," said

Nagayasu Yamagishi, a stategist at Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities.   "We cleared 10,000 but we need to see more Japanese corporate results before deciding whether to push the Nikkei higher as many companies were unable to provide their estimates," he said.

The benchmark Nikkei closed the day up 1.6 percent, or 154.46 points, at 10,004.20, after reaching a post-quake intraday high of 10,017.47. The broader Topix also rose 1.6 percent, or 13.70 points, to 865.55.

By comparison, S&P stocks futures SPc1 rose 0.7 percent after President Barack Obama announced on Monday that bin Laden was killed on Sunday in a firefight with U.S. forces in Pakistan and that his body was recovered. Volume slipped below the 2 billion shares mark, with 1.83 billion shares trading on the Tokyo Stock Exchange's first section, down from a two-week high of 2.18 billion shares on Thursday. Japanese markets were closed on Friday.

Energy-related shares dropped as oil fell on the view that bin Laden's death would strip some of the risk premium that has been underpinning commodities prices.      Inpex fell 2.6 percent to 600,000 yen, JX Holdings dropped 0.2 percent to 561 yen and Japan Petroleum

Exploration shed 1.3 percent to 3,900 yen after oiln prices fell by more than a dollar the news.

ICE Brent crude for June LCOc1 fell $1.48 to $124.41 a barrel, while U.S. crude CLc1 slid $1.51 to $112.42.