Last night, the Federal Reserve's interest rate decision finally settled — a 25 basis point cut, along with a halt in balance sheet reduction in favor of bond purchases and liquidity injection, officially entering balance sheet expansion mode. Once the news broke, the three major US stock indices all rallied: Dow Jones up 1.05%, NASDAQ up 0.33%, S&P 500 up 0.67%. Expecting this positive news to boost global markets together, the Asia-Pacific markets today, however, gave a cold shower.

The stock markets in Japan, South Korea, and Australia indeed surged at the open, opening up 0.43%, 0.68%, and 0.67% respectively, but the good times didn't last long — Japanese stocks reversed course at 11:35 Beijing time, with declines reaching 1.28%; South Korea also fell 0.85%. The culprit was the Bank of Japan signaling a potential rate hike again, causing the bond market to plunge, and the entire Asia-Pacific market suffered as a result.

The A-shares and Hong Kong stocks also couldn't escape. The Hang Seng Index initially rose 0.67% in the morning, but by midday, all gains were wiped out, closing slightly down. The Shanghai Composite Index barely held at 3900 points yesterday; today, it was pushed back down, falling 0.46% at midday to close at 3882 points. The volatile downward trend is a bit headache-inducing. The Shenzhen Component Index and the ChiNext 50 declined by 0.18% and 0.96%, respectively.

However, there was a bright spot — driven by strong performance in the electrical equipment sector, the ChiNext Index surprisingly rose against the trend, marking one of the few bright spots in today's A-shares. Overall, the enthusiasm from the Fed's rate cut hasn't fully subsided, and with the Bank of Japan taking a hawkish stance again, market sentiment is fluctuating, and short-term volatility is likely to continue.