Tokyo stocks up at break ahead of Trump press briefing

Tokyo - Tokyo shares rebounded on Wednesday morning after three days of losses as exporters got a boost from a drop in the yen and with investors eyeing US president-elect Donald Trump's first formal press conference.

"There's still buying appetite from individual investors who were unable to get on the recent rally," said Hiroyasu Iida, head of the investment research centre at Aizawa Securities.

But "it's difficult to take on a lot of risk before ... Trump's speech" later Wednesday, he told Bloomberg News.

The previously scheduled briefing comes just as US spy chiefs have reportedly told Trump that Russian operatives claim to possess deeply compromising personal and financial information about him.

The tycoon dismissed a CNN story on the issue as a "political witch hunt".

In Tokyo, the benchmark Nikkei 225 index gained 69.42 points, to sit at 19 370.86 by the break, while the broader Topix index of all first-section issues rose 8.06 points, to 1 550.37.

The dollar rose to ¥116.11 from ¥115.76 in New York on Tuesday afternoon.

A weaker yen tends to spur demand for shares of Japanese exporters because it makes their products more competitive abroad and inflates the value of repatriated profits.

Sony jumped 3.47% to ¥3 512 while Toyota was up 0.62% at ¥6 904.

Toshiba soared 4.98% to ¥303 after news reports that the troubled conglomerate's key lenders have agreed to maintain its financing through February.

Banking giant Mitsubishi UFJ rose 1.03% to ¥734.2 and rival Mizuho Financial was up 0.99% at ¥214.2.

Market heavyweight Fanuc, a factory automation systems maker, climbed 0.94% to ¥20 260 after the Nikkei business daily reported it would boost industrial robot production as global demand picked up.