With inflation fears, equities decline; BOJ and Fed meetings are scheduled

An abundance of impending central bank meetings came into sharp focus early Friday when the majority of Asian markets plummeted due to fears over higher-than-expected interest rates sparked by hotter-than-expected U.S. inflation figures.

The February increase in producer price index inflation was greater than anticipated, and this gave Wall Street a poor lead-in to regional markets. Following a robust consumer inflation report earlier this week, traders' hopes of a June rate decrease were dampened by the result.

The Nikkei 225 index in Japan dropped 0.3% on Friday, leading to a projected weekly decrease of 2.3% as investors kept locking in profits from record highs reached last week. Despite rising 0.6%, the TOPIX was expected to fall by over 2% this week.

Now, all eyes were focused on the Bank of Japan meeting the following week, where it is widely anticipated that the institution will announce, if not really implement, an end to its negative interest rate and yield curve management measures.

Bets on a BOJ shift were mostly sparked by indications of persistent inflation in Japan, and the outcome of nationwide pay talks indicated significant salary rises this year—a development that is also anticipated to support inflation.

Wider Asian markets also fell, hurt by a combination of falling technology companies and poor Chinese data.

The Shanghai Composite and Shanghai Shenzhen CSI 300 indices in China dropped 0.3% and 0.7%, respectively, dropping further from four-month highs as the nation's struggling real estate market received no respite from low home price data for February.

(Sources: investing.com, reuters.com)