US equity futures took a plunge on the news, breaking the morning ramp, but have since regained some of today's gains as the market consider the implications.
I would expect the market to try and shrug this off at least until after the European close, and probably until about 11 PM Central Europe Time.
My heartfelt sympathy to all my friends in Japan. Tokyo was shaken but not damaged as Sendai is quite some distance to the northeast.
The full impact of these natural (and manmade) disasters is not fully factored in to the markets in this interconnected global economy, being smothered at least for now by monetary expansion and excess liquidity, the almost euphoric complacency of the Bernanke put.
At some point reality and the markets will converge.
90 minutes later: Bloomberg reports the tsunami warning has been called off.
