Asian stocks perked up on Thursday after U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell reaffirmed interest rates would stay low, calming market fears that higher inflation might prompt the central bank to tighten the monetary spigot.
In a second day of testimony in Washington, Powell reiterated the Fed's promise to get the U.S. economy back to full employment and to not worry about inflation unless prices rose in a persistent and troubling way. MSCI's gauge of stocks across the globe gained 0.12per cent, as rising stocks on Wall Street pushed the global benchmark to reverse early losses.