From Wolf Richter at wolfstreet.com:
And there’s a bitter irony.
The Bank of Japan’s surprise Negative-Interest-Rate party for stocks set a new record: it lasted only two days.
Today a week ago, the Bank of Japan shocked markets into action. As the economy has deteriorated despite years of zero-interest-rate policy and Quantitative and Qualitative Easing (QQE) – a souped-up version of QE – the BOJ announced that it would cut one of its deposit rates from positive 0.1% to negative 0.1%.
Headlines screamed Japan had gone “negative,” that it had joined the NIRPs of Europe – the Eurozone countries, Switzerland, Sweden, and Denmark. But it was just another desperate move, a head fake, and once the dust would settle, the hot air would go out [read…QE in Japan Nears End: Daiwa Capital Markets].
Now the dust has settled and the hot air has gone out.
On Thursday, January 28, the day before the announcement, the Nikkei closed at 17,041 down 19% from its Abenomics peak of 20,953 in June 2015. Today, it closed even lower.
To continue reading: Negative-Interest-Rate Effect already Dead, Central Banks Lost Control over Stocks
