Asian Stocks Rally Over Optimism About Europe

Asia-Pacific stock markets rallied Thursday, echoing the company's performance on Wall Street, investors took heart from a few U.S. data strong economic and hope that European policy makers to increase their efforts to strengthen the continent's debt problems.

Global markets are gyrating for several months now and no sign that European debt issues will be resolved in the near future, they are likely to remain volatile for the foreseeable future. The weak U.S. economy and the expansion in the engines of moderate growth, like China and India have also exacerbated the global nervousness.

So far, however, the mood turned to the positive and the stock market in much of Asia is more than 2 percent by late morning on Thursday.

The Nikkei 225 was 1.9 percent higher by lunchtime in Tokyo, and both the TAIEX Taiwan and Singapore Straits Times Index rose 2.1 percent in the morning.

The Kospi in South Korea rose 3.5 percent and the S. & P. / ASX 200 in Australia received 3 percent.

Hong Kong, which had been closed for holidays on Wednesday, the Hang Seng jumped 4.3 per cent. Mainland China markets were closed for holiday weeks.

Investors await signs that the European Central Bank may take steps to support the European economy in difficulty and the financial sector at its monthly meeting policy later Thursday.

While some economists expect the central bank to lower interest rates on a permanent basis to all other instruments are buying securities backed debt problems of banks, for example, or the expansion of low-interest loans to cash-strapped institutions.

Asian stock markets have followed the ups and downs of U.S. and European markets for several months, and Thursday was no exception.

On Wall Street, took the Dow Jones and Standard & Poor's 500 ended Wednesday with gains of 1.2 percent and 1.8 percent respectively.

Investors were encouraged by a report from the Institute for Supply Management which showed that non-manufacturing firms continued to increase in September.