Asian And European Equities Tumble Following Bank Of Japan's Surprise Non-Decision

The Bank of Japan gathered on Thursday as market participants expected the central bank to announce a new round of stimulus. However, the bank surprised many investors by standing pat and left its deposit rate at minus 0.1 percent unchanged.

The Bank of Japan kept its asset purchase program of 80 trillion yen a year unchanged and also pushed back its forecasted date for inflation to hit its 2 percent target rate.

"The stock market was disappointed about the BOJ decision, and now Japanese stock prices are going down," Shingo Ide, chief equity strategist for the NLI Research Institute, a think tank in Tokyo told The Wall Street Journal. "The stock market will search the bottom level of their price today."

"We still think the BOJ will go ahead with further easing at some point, probably at the July meeting," Michael Moen, a fixed income Asia investment manager for Aberdeen Asset Management also told The Wall Street Journal. "Not enough time has really passed for them to assess the impact of the negative interest rate policy on the broader economy at this time."

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Naturally, Japanese stocks plunged on Thursday following the central bank's non-decision. The country's main index, the Nikkei 225, plunged 3.61 percent - its worst one-day percentage loss since February 12.

India's Mumbai Sensex index lost 1.77 percent, Taiwan's TSEC index lost 1.04 percent and China's Shanghai index fell 0.27 percent.

Australia's ASX index gained 0.73 percent and Hong Kong's Hang Seng index rose 0.12 percent.

While major indices in Asia closed mix, European indices were nearly unanimously in the red with more than four hours of trading remaining.

France's CAC index was lower by 1.28 percent, Germany's DAX was lower by 1.17 percent and the UK's FTSE index was lower by 0.89 percent.

The broad Euro Stoxx 50 index was lower by 1.62 percent.

The price of oil ticked slightly higher Thursday morning, as did gold futures.