feb 15 reuters  a look at the day ahead in asian markets from jamie mcgeever last march it burst through 3 in september it smashed 4 and now it is well above 5 is the feds terminal rate as implied by us futures markets heading inexorably towards 6 however unlikely or unjustified you think that scenario is it would take a brave person to bet against it right now recent momentum is plain to see and the latest us inflation data released on tuesday has further emboldened the rate hawks what this means for asian markets and risk appetite on wednesday is less clear wall street held up surprisingly well given the spike in borrowing costs and implied rates while the vix volatility index slumped the most in a month perhaps most surprising is the nasdaq which jumped 055 for a second daily gain the techheavy index is traditionally more sensitive to changes in marketbased interest rates and there is often a highly negative correlation between the index and us bond yields but that relationship has broken down recently so much so that the nasdaqs simple rolling 25day correlation with the twoyear us yield is the most positive since april last year there may be a more straightforward if equally surprising explanation for the resilience of risky assets and investor morale around 1 trillion of central bank liquidity pumped into the global system in recent months the two biggest providers have been japan and china with over 700 billion between them including record bond buying from japan in january according to some estimates how long or if this liquidity provision continues will in large part hinge on the bank of japan and its new governor kazuo ueda it was confirmed on tuesday that ueda will replace incumbent haruhiko kuroda in early april the yen initially rallied but was later caught in the dollars postcpi recovery and hit a sixweek low of 13331 per dollar investors in asia have trade data from india and indonesia and south korean unemployment figures for local direction on wednesday while the deepening sinous diplomatic spat over the spy balloons could weigh on sentiment here are three key developments that could provide more direction to markets on wednesday