If you want to understand what happened overnight in the wake of Tuesday’s selloff in the US, all you need to do is glance at the clustering on this chart…

(Goldman)

…or perhaps have a look at this table…

(Goldman)

…or maybe take a minute to digest this…

(Goldman)

Taken together, those three visuals convey the following message: drawdowns happen more often than you think they do, and over time, regional equity markets have become increasingly correlated which makes it difficult to find diversification (i.e. a place to hide) when we get days like Tuesday.

With that in mind, it should come as no surprise that global stocks fell overnight, taking their cues from Wall Street.

The Nikkei was hit hard, as Japanese equities were weighed down by reports of a failed North Korean missile test and a yen that’s sitting near a fourth month high as haven demand spikes.

“Investors are recalibrating expectations to reflect the reality that U.S. President Donald Trump’s pro-growth agenda won’t happen overnight,” said Jonathan Ravelas, chief market strategist at BDO Unibank. With Asian markets having rallied, traders “needed a good reason to take profit, and here it is,” Margaret Yang, an analyst at CMC Markets in Singapore, told Bloomberg by e-mail.

Yes, “here it is.” “Here’s” proof that Trump’s agenda is going to take an eternity to implement (imagine that) and suddenly, everyone is waking up to the fact that while we’re all waiting on tax reform and fiscal stimulus, we’re going to be subject to near daily insanity from a man who is quite clearly unhinged. In short: great expectations are being dialed back fast. “We are seeing a correction followed by unwinding of those expectations,” the above-mentioned Yang adds. Here’s a summary of analyst chatter re: Asian markets: 

IG ASIA (Jingyi Pan)

SBI SECURITIES (Hideyuki Suzuki)