Tokyo: Japan’s Nikkei average rose modestly on Monday, ending its longest losing streak since the current “Abenomics” rally started in November 2012, as retail investors picked up shares of small- and medium-sized companies.

The benchmark Nikkei gained 0.4 per cent to 15,221.56 points by the midday break and looked poised to snap a five-day slide, after Eurozone banking jitters faded and lifted Wall Street shares on Friday.

But many institutional investors stayed on the sidelines ahead of a barrage of events this week, leaving domestic retail traders the main players of the day.

“We are in the midst of summer, prior to key policy meetings and speeches, earnings and Chinese data — all those things together make for a very low volume, directionless, low conviction market,” said Stefan Worrall, director of equity cash sales at Credit Suisse in Tokyo.

The Bank of Japan will kick off a two-day policy meeting on Monday. The central bank is widely expected to leave monetary policy unchanged though it may trim its economic growth estimates due to soft exports and a slump on consumer spending after an April 1 sales tax hike.

Investors’ focus will also be on congressional testimony by Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen, scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday, and corporate earnings season, both in the US and Japan.

China will release second-quarter GDP data on Wednesday which investors will scour for signs of whether the economy is stabilising.

US stocks and other major global equities edged higher and the yen stabilised against the dollar on Friday as worries about Portugal’s biggest bank ebbed, while oil prices dropped on easing concern about supply losses in the Middle East.

“Retail investors were buying small caps,” said Yasuo Sakuma, portfolio manager at Bayview Asset Management.

While large-cap shares saw limited price moves, the Mothers index, which comprises smaller growing companies, rose 0.9 per cent.

Shares popular among day traders made hefty gains, with game-maker Colopl Inc jumping 5 per cent, PeptiDream Inc, a bio-tech company, rising 1.3 per cent, and a Cyberdyne Inc, manufacturer of robot, gaining 2.2 per cent, in heavy trade.

On the main board, index heavyweight SoftBank Corp/swas the most traded stock, climbing 1.6 per cent after the Nikkei business daily said the mobile carrier has reached a basic agreement to acquire T-Mobile US Inc from German Deutsche Telekom AG, paving the way for the merger between T-Mobile and Sprint Corp.

Sharp Corp gained 1.3 per cent following media reports that the struggling electronics maker was looking to buy smartphone panel production facility at its Kameyama plant from Apple Inc for some 30 billion yen.

Tsugami Corp jumped 3.9 per cent after the Nikkei newspaper said the precision machinery maker’s operating profit for the April-June quarter was likely to soar by 380 percent.

Toho Co Ltd advanced 3.1 per cent after Japan’s biggest film distributor announced a robust March-May earnings thanks to a smash hit of “Frozen”.

The broader Topix added 0.4 per cent to 1,259.73 in light trade, while the JPX-Nikkei Index 400 rose 0.3 per cent to 11,455.48.