A woman wearing a face mask walks past a bank's electronic board showing the Hong Kong share index in Hong Kong, Thursday, May 5, 2022. Asian stock markets followed Wall Street higher on Thursday after the Federal Reserve chairman downplayed the likelihood of bigger rate hikes following the U.S. central bank's biggest increase in two decades.
The Fed's rate hike and Powell's comments “demonstrate that the Fed continues to try and orchestrate a soft landing while tackling high levels of inflation,” David Chao of Invesco said in a report. Investors worry about whether the Fed can extinguish inflation without pushing the economy into a downturn.