* Support seen at 200-day moving average of 9,901
* Electronics retailers gain on energy-efficiency programme report
* Banks flat despite JPMorgan; European bank stress tests eyed
* Volumes low ahead of long weekend in Tokyo, U.S. earnings
By Antoni Slodkowski
TOKYO, July 15 (Reuters) - The Nikkei on Friday nudged towards the top of a narrow range it has been stuck in for most of the week, buoyed by European investors scooping up cyclical shares, though the majority of big players stayed on the sidelines ahead of a long weekend.
Home electronics retailers bolstered Tokyo stocks, with Yamada Denki adding 2.5 percent, after a media report saying Japan will revive a programme to promote energy-efficient appliances as it looks to ease power shortages in the wake of the March 11 earthquake.
Appetite for riskier assets was tentatively maintained after S&P futures shrugged off a warning from Standard & Poor's that there was at least a 50 percent chance it would downgrade its rating on U.S. debt, though traders were reluctant to make big bets ahead of the results of stress tests on European banks due later.
Investors were hedging against negative test results by shifting funds into so-called defensive sectors such as pharmaceuticals and railways, tracking recent advances in safe-haven gold, which is on track to match its biggest winning streak in four decades.
"The market is strongly supported by European and Asian investors. Europeans are now switching to autos and machinery, as Japan is poised to recover sharply after the quake," said Hideyuki Ishiguro, a supervisor at Okasan Securities.
Banks failed to capitalise on the higher-than-expected profit reported by JPMorgan Chase & Co as it wrote off fewer bad mortgages and credit card loans, with focus on the stress tests in Europe.
"The combination of the upcoming three-day weekend, bank stress tests and earnings by bellwether U.S. companies like Apple due next week are depressing volumes," he said, referring to a public holiday in Japan on Monday.
The benchmark Nikkei was up 0.1 percent at 9,945.57 after opening marginally lower. The Nikkei has spent most of the week trapped between resistance at 10,000 and immediate support at its 200-day moving average of 9,901.
The broader Topix added 0.1 percent to 857.41
With only 1.0 billion shares having changed hands on the main board with less than an hour of trade left, trading volumes were poised to come close to the lowest levels recorded this year. The average for last week was 1.8 billion shares.
GOOD GOOGLE
Strong earnings from Google Inc spurred strong profit-taking in recently outperforming internet stocks such as DeNA , down 2.4 percent at 3,930 yen, and Gree , which shed 2.7 percent to 1,857 yen. Both those stocks were among the most actively traded on the main board by turnover.
Hitachi rose 1.9 percent to 484 yen on news that an alliance it has formed with General Electric has moved a step closer to being commissioned to build a nuclear power plant in Lithuania.
Hitachi currently trades at a 46 percent discount to its peers based on its price to earnings ratio. Its PER stands at 9.3 while the average for its peers, including Toshiba and Fujitsu , is at 17.2.
Fast Retailing fell 0.8 percent to 13,420 yen after posting its fifth straight drop in quarterly profit, with sales at its Uniqlo casual-clothing chain sagging following the March earthquake.
CLSA cut its rating on the firm to "underperform" from "outperform", saying that sales were largely in line with the brokerage's estimate but that profit levels fell somewhat short due to weaker-than-expected domestic earnings at Uniqlo. (Additional reporting by Ayai Tomiswa; Editing by Joseph Radford)