"Markets look ahead to economic normalisation as vaccines will go around. Stock prices are likely to rise gradually while looking at upcoming earnings," said Tomo Kinoshita, global market strategist at Invesco Asset Management in Tokyo.
"Regulators might make further efforts to cool down the property market and control domestic leverage. Fiscal discipline might also be strengthened, leading to deceleration in local government financing and infrastructure investment," said Chaoping Zhu, global market strategist at J.P. Morgan Asset Management in Shanghai.
"The U.S. recovery looks really strong. And now that restaurants and hotels, both of which are labour intensive, are reopening, we could see sharp gains in payrolls in coming month," said Koichi Fujishiro, senior economist at Dai-ichi Life Research. The 10-year U.S. Treasuries yield dropped to 1.529%, a five-week low, on Thursday and last stood at 1.578% , off its 14-month high of 1.776% set at the end of March.