Japan share traders will be looking Thursday to reverse Wednesday's downward trend, which pushed the leading index to a two-week low. The Nikkei 225 Average closed down 182.61 points or 1.1 percent at 16,955.31, marking the lowest closing level for the blue chip index since Oct 1 when it finished at 16,845.96. The broader TOPIX index dropped 24.96 points or 1.5 percent to 1,600.29.Declining stocks outpaced gainers 1,376 to 280, with 63 issues unchanged. Traded volume moved up to 2.31 billion shares after 1.91 billion shares traded hands the day before. Sanyo Electric sank 6.1 percent on news that it was foregoing the sale of its struggling semiconductor unit. Private equity firm Advantage Partners LLP failed to secure funds for the deal amid tight credit markets. Among other stocks, telecom company KDDI dropped 2.4 percent or 22,000 yen, NTT Docomo lost 3.2 percent or 6,000 yen. Shares of Sony were 40 yen lower while Toshiba gained 8 yen. Sony and Toshiba were expected to announce a new joint chip deal on Thursday. Japan's major steel companies lost ground. Nippon Steel Corp., fell 2 percent ,JFE Holdings Inc., parent of steelmaking unit JFE Steel Corp., dropped 4.1 percent, Sumitomo Metal Industries dropped 2.7 percent and Kobe Steel Ltd. dropped 3.3 percent. Mitsubishi UFJ lost over 3 per cent and Mizuho Financial Group declined 4 per cent, after larger losses the day before. Nomura Holdings fell over 4.6 per cent on plans to shut US mortgage business in the wake of losses on mortgage-backed securities. Tokyo share traders got mixed lead in from their counterparts on Wall Street. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 20.40 points 13,892.54 while the S%P 500 Index gained 2.71 points and the Nasdaq Composite Index was up 28.76 points. Closer to home, New Zealand's NZX-50 Index rose 9.67 points or 0.2 percent to 4,321.84. Australia's The S&P/ASX 200 closed 11.9 points or 0.2 percent lower at 6,680.1 and the All Ordinaries fell 15.2 points or 0.2 percent to 6,696.1. In other Asia-Pacific trading, China's Shanghai Composite was down 0.33 per cent at 6,071, Hong Kong's Hang Seng fell 0.12 per cent to 28,920, Taiwan Weighted was 0.27 per cent lower at 9,566 and Strait Times was down 0.70 per cent at 3,784. Tokyo share traders will get data today on foreign stock and bond investments for last week and September department store sales figures.