Foreign investors turned net sellers of Japanese stocks for the first time in four weeks last week.

Nonresident investors sold 81.9 billion yen more than they bought, against net purchases of 130.42 billion yen the previous week, a weekly Tokyo Stock Exchange report said.

The downturn in New York stock prices last week apparently prompted foreign investors to unwind their Japanese positions, brokers noted.

On Wall Street, both the Dow Jones industrial average and the technology-heavy Nasdaq composite index gave up much of their recent gains amid growing doubts about an anticipated U.S. economic recovery later in the year.

Selling centered on information technology and semiconductor chip issues, investors' recent favorites around the globe. There were indications that foreign institutional investors sold NTT and other large-capitalization information technology stocks to cut their losses.

Among domestic market players, long-term credit banks, city banks and regional banks were net sellers for the 16th consecutive week, indicating the nation's industrial web of cross-shareholdings is continuing to unravel.

As a whole, they registered 33.51 billion yen in net sales on top of 26.62 billion yen the previous week.

Meanwhile, trust banks turned net buyers for the first time in three weeks.

They bought 100.17 billion yen more than they sold in a turnaround from net sales of 21.63 billion yen.

A broad array of shares dropped to attractive price levels, enticing public pension funds to hunt for bargains.