Japan's Nikkei average ended flat on Wednesday and failed to top the key 9,800 level as investors took profits before a liquidity operation by the European Central Bank, but the index still logged its best February performance in two decades.
The Nikkei ended flat at 9,723.24 after earlier jumping as high as 9,866.41.
"We went too far yesterday. We are taking some profits here. People are not really on the bull market wagon, so they are trying to make some money and then get out as long as they can," a trader said. "Volumes are okay, but not great."
The benchmark gained 10.5% this month, logging its best February performance since 1991, shrugging off negative news from Elpida Memory Inc's bankruptcy filing this week.
A Reuters poll showed that Japanese fund managers turned bullish on stocks in February after surprise easing steps announced by the Bank of Japan earlier this month boosted risk appetite and underpinned investor confidence.
Domestic fund managers raised weightings in Japanese equities for three months in a row to 35.1% in February, the highest level since the survey began in 1995.
Shares of Elpida, Japan's last remaining PC memory chipmaker, tanked 97.2% to 7 yen.
Chip-related shares jumped after Daiwa Securities Capital Markets upgraded the sector to "positive" from "neutral," helping them easily recover ground after the sector fell a day earlier on the back of Elpida.
Advantest Corp rose 2.3%, while Sumco Corp, the world's No.2 maker of wafers used to make semiconductors, jumped 1.5%.
Other big gainers included Panasonic Corp, up 1.5% after the electronics company named the head of its loss-making TV business as its new president and pledged to get its TV division back on track within two years.
Toshiba Corp advanced 1.4% to a four-month intraday high of 356 yen after it agreed to buy some production equipment from hard-drive manufacturer Western Digital Corp in March.
The broader Topix shed 0.3% to 835.96.
With investors aggressively moving out of Elpida, trading volume on the main board rose to the highest since August 9, with roughly 3.06 billion shares changing hands on Wednesday, up from 2.51 billion shares on Tuesday.
Elpida accounted for a little over 20% of all the volume on the main board.
