Investors in Asia go into Thursday in a bullish mood with Asian stocks at two-year highs, boosted by strength in tech and calm across global markets that is keeping a lid on volatility and loosening financial conditions.Highlights from Thursday's Asia and Pacific calendar are interest rate decisions from China and Indonesia, and first quarter GDP figures from New Zealand.
Bank Indonesia is also expected to keep its key interest rate on hold, at 6.25%, according to a Reuters poll of economists who pushed out their first rate cut call to early next year from late this year. It's not inconceivable that New Zealand slipped into a technical recession in Q1, albeit an extremely mild one. The consensus forecast in a Reuters poll is for quarter-on-quarter GDP growth of 0.1%, following a contraction of 0.1% in the October-December period.