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Hong Kong - Asian stock markets climbed on Thursday after the Federal Reserve provided a positive outlook on the global economy, while Tokyo soared more than one percent on expectations Japan will unveil another round of stimulus.
After a much-anticipated policy meeting, the US central bank decided against hiking interest rates and stood by its stance that any further rises would be slow and small as economic growth remained relatively weak.
However, its post-meeting statement suggested it was less concerned about the global economic outlook than it was at the start of the year when it cited turmoil in world markets for lowering its forecasts for rate hikes in 2016.
While analysts argued over what the Fed's comments meant for the timing of its next rate rise, investors welcomed the prospect they will stay low well into the second half of the year.
On Wall Street the Dow and S&P 500 climbed, although the tech-rich Nasdaq was dragged down by weak earnings from Apple and Twitter.
In Asia, Hong Kong was up 1.1%, Shanghai put on 0.1%, Sydney added 0.7% and Singapore was 0.6% higher.
And Tokyo's Nikkei soared 1.4% by the break as the yen dipped against the dollar ahead of a Bank of Japan (BoJ) policy meeting that is widely expected to see further monetary easing measures.
Speculation has grown that the BoJ will act after this month's double earthquake in southern Japan, which led to the temporary closure of several factories and compounded problems for an already weak economy.
Adding fuel to the fire, a slate of weak data - including the biggest fall in consumer prices for three years - reinforced the struggle authorities have in kick-starting growth and igniting inflation in the country.
Their decision is likely to come around midday (03:00 GMT).
"The market is expecting the BoJ to increase its asset purchases," Mitsushige Akino, executive officer at Ichiyoshi Asset Management, told Bloomberg News.
Oil prices ended Wednesday at fresh 2016 highs after data showed US production had fallen in the week to Friday, which in turn boosted energy firms in Asian trade.
Sydney-listed Woodside Petroleum climbed almost two percent, while BHP Billiton was up 3.8%. In Hong Kong, PetroChina added 2.5% and CNOOC 0.7%.
