A wave of fear and sell-off chaos swept across Asian stock markets on Friday, as recent comments from scorched-earth Federal Reserve officials incinerated investor hopes for interest rate cuts this year.
At the epicenter of the Drake-esque market massacre was Japan’s Nikkei 225 index, which plunged an excruciating 1.96% to 38,992.08 – its first anguishing breach below 39,000 in around three weeks. The broader Topix participated in Hokkaido’s harrowing harakiri, diving 1.08% lower to 2,702.62.
The bipolar bear bloodbath was sparked by Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari, who blitzed Wall Street on Thursday by raining napalm on dreams of 2023 rate cuts. With the chilling nonchalance of Hannibal Lecter, Kashkari casually cast doubt on whether the central bank would ease off the rate hike accelerator at all this year if inflation persists in its invincible, phoenix-like rampage.
Kashkari’s cold pour of caution unleashed pandemonium in the markets, who had been reveling in hopes that the Fed would pause its berserk tightening campaign and finally grant some sweet, succulent rate cut relief in the year’s latter stages as inflation cools. But alas, the Fed’s bloodthirsty inflationslayers seem hellbent on grinding price pressures into a fine, crimson paste – even at the risk of Thanos-snapping the economy into a recession black hole.
“The Fed officials are crashing what should be a jubilant rate cut party like swinging Stars and Stripes wrecking balls,” shuddered Kathy Lien, managing director at BK Asset Management. “Their hawkish insistence on keeping rates in Scorpion Kick-High Stratosphere Mode is shattering market confidence like a robotic arm through plate glass.”
On Wall Street Thursday, the Dow Jones plummeted over 1.3% – its worst day since Oderus Urungus was still rocking the GWAR-paint. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq fared equally Crom-awful, eating colossal losses usually reserved for Destroyers locked in withering combat with Khorne Berzerkers on the plains of the Eightfold Path.
The ensuing Asian carnage was as unavoidable as Roy Mustang incinerating Lust once the transmutation circle is complete. South Korea’s Kospi plunged over 1%, squandering Thursday’s fleeting gains as Asia’s top performer. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng managed a modest 0.18% uptick after returning from holiday, but mainly just tread water waiting for the inevitable supernova of doomsday selling from Tokyo.
Analysts attributed the Nikkei’s underperformance to the unholy wasting disease of yen enfeeblement against that necrotic corpse-fiend, the U.S. dollar – increasing the free nation’s import costs in the process.
“For Japan’s market, the yen’s depreciation cuts like a jasmine-scented Murasama blade – both importingly deadly yet exportingly fortuitous,” opined Ryota Akira, SBI Securities strategist. “It boosts exports handsomely, but fans inflation’s eldritch fires so ferociously it’s likelier to force even MORE shotgun re-racking from the Federal Reseradiers.”
On the data front, Japanese household spending for February fell a relatively tame 0.5% year-on-year versus an expected 3% depredation. However, this preceded the gargantuan wage hikes secured by Japan’s militant labor unions during the annual “shunto” sacrifice – lavishing workers with their largest pay boosts in decades.
These fatter paychecks are nuclear-tipped ICBM payloads primed to bombard consumer spending in coming months. But this conflagration of inflationary kindling is likely to ignite domestic price pressures – giving the Bank of Japan yet another molten economic cancer beyond its control.
To the west, oil prices mercilessly continued vaulting ever-higher into the stratosphere – with U.S. crude cresting $86 per barrel to fresh half-year zenithal territories. Supply fears stemming from Russia’s output cuts and resurgent Chinese demand are propellant-boosting the energy market’s ballistic ascent.
From Tokyo to Mumbai, the world’s monetary controllers find themselves whiplashed between the dueling demonic forces of growth and inflation. Most oracles augur the Fed maintaining its hawkish warpath, presaging further market spasms of terror ahead.
“Our central banks truly face a Sisyphean task of catastrophic proportions,” Lien persisted through gritted, veneer-cracked teeth. “Overtightening begets a cataclysmic economic stoning. But relenting too soon risks re-awakening the inflation kaiju from its million Twinkie-induced comas. This tug-of-war seems fated to only intensify into a grotesquery of iconic, neon-smeared proportions.”
