Japanese Stocks Crash At The Open, Volatility Explodes Higher

Asia is open.

And it is not pretty.

The Nikkei is coming off a rough Monday and the problem here is obviously that overseas markets were merely catching up to Wall Street’s Friday selloff. So now, they’ll need to catch up (or I guess catch “down” is better) to the bloodbath that saw the Dow and the S&P plunge 4% to start the week.

So here we go and as noted above it’s ugly. Japanese stocks are down more than 4% out of the gate, extending Monday’s sharp declines:

And vol. is exploding on the heels of the truly epic move in the VIX in the U.S.:

Don’t look now, but it looks like the Nikkei just entered a technical correction off its January highs:

Look at that fucking chart. I mean… my God.

“There could also be some unpleasant margin calls coming when you consider the large participation in recent months from Japanese retail investors,” Bloomberg’s Mark Cranfield writes, before warning “that would ratchet up the pain for equity bulls.”