Foreign investors sold Japanese long-term debt securities in the week ended December ‍6, ahead ‍of an expected Bank of Japan (BOJ) interest rate ​hike on December 19.

They withdrew approximately 442.6 billion yen ($2.84 billion) out of ⁠long-term bonds after a 1.07 trillion yen net purchase in the ⁠prior week, data ‌from Japan's Ministry of Finance showed on Thursday.

Japanese short-term bills, however, saw 965.3 billion yen worth of ⁠net purchases as inflows extended to a second week.

Last week, Japanese officials and policy makers signalled that the BOJ was preparing to raise its key policy rate ⁠by a quarter percentage ​point to 0.75% at its meeting on December 18-19, to tame inflation and ‍declines in the yen.

The benchmark 10-year yield reached 1.97% on Monday, ​its highest level since June 2007. It was last at 1.935%.

Cross-border purchases of local stocks, meanwhile, slowed to a net 96.8 billion yen from about 655.7 billion yen in the previous week.

The Nikkei was down about 0.6% on Thursday as losses in SoftBank Group outweighed optimism over a 25-basis-point Federal Reserve rate cut.

Japanese investors, meanwhile, snapped up 452.9 billion yen worth of ⁠foreign long-term bonds, logging their fourth ‌weekly net purchase in five. They also bought 285.5 billion yen worth of foreign short-term bills.

They divested 64.5 billion ‌yen worth ⁠of foreign stocks, ending three weeks of net purchases.

($1 = 155.6600 yen)

(Reporting ⁠by Gaurav Dogra; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu)