Overnight

Taking their lead perhaps form Wall Street, Japanese equities fell overnight as global uncertainty seems on the rise again with the British pound taking a pounding at one point hitting $1.2874 in Asian trading before recovering slightly.

The Nikkei dropped 3.1% as the yen strengthened, sending shivers through Japanese exporters who get rocked in the exchange rate differentials. The Nikkei has staged a six-day rally though Monday as investors assumed central banks would further easy monetary policy. The Kospi shed 2.1%, the Australian S&P 200 declined 1.3%, the Hang Send Index lost 2.0% and the Shanghai Composite Index was off 0.2%. All of the Topix's 33 sub-sectors were also in the red.

The pound's downfall hit a 31-year low and comments by Bank of England Governor Mark Carney didn't help when he revealed the bank would not be able to offset all of the economic turmoil. Pain or the prospect thereof sends investors flocking to safer ground and that is what happened as they moved into the yen, Asia's perceived safe currency port in rough times. July 14 becomes now a watershed moment unless something changes before then as that's the date of the next UK MPC meeting and where investors expect Carney to change monetary policy.

News out of China was not that comforting either as Monday, one agency reported, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang noted it would not be easy to achieve a growth rate of 6.7 percent in the first quarter. Some economists feel China is headed for a depression once all the economic skeletons are out in the open. Meanwhile, the dollar moved higher against a basket of currencies and gold rose to $1,367.56 an ounce up from $1,320 last week. In Japan, the yield on the 10-year Japanese government bond fell as much as negative 0.271 earlier in the session before climbing back slightly to negative 0.269.