TOKYO -- Asian stocks gained on Friday, taking their cue from a rise in the U.S. that reflected investors' enthusiasm for a big economic stimulus to fight the coronavirus crisis.
Japan's Nikkei average index closed up 3.9% to 19,389, with demand for stocks including medical equipment maker Telmo, SoftBank Group, and semiconductor manufacturing equipment maker Tokyo Electron.
Indian stocks received a boost after the Reserve Bank of India cut rates by 75 basis points to 4.4% in an emergency move to counter the economic consequences of the coronavirus pandemic. The benchmark BSE Sensex stock jumped 3.8% or 1,142 points to 31,088, though it later gave up some gains to trade at 29,676, or 0.9% lower than the previous day.
South Korea's Kospi index closed up 1.9%, Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index rose 0.6%, while Taiwan's benchmark fell 0.4%.
Asia largely followed the lead of Wall Street, where the Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 6% to 22,552, marking the best three-day run for U.S. stocks since the 1930s. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said on Thursday that the Fed was "not going to run out of ammunition," in an interview with American media.
Despite the fact that a record 3.28 million people in the U.S., the globe's latest COVID-19 epicenter, applied for unemployment benefits in the week ended Saturday, investors have high hopes for the $2 trillion stimulus that the Senate approved.
The package allocates $349 billion in loans to small businesses, $500 billion for loans, loan guarantees or other aid to businesses, and $58 billion in the form of loans and loan guarantees to passenger airlines.
On Thursday, Group of 20 the leaders also held a teleconference and agreed to inject over $5 trillion into the global economy and committed to do "whatever it takes" to overcome the pandemic.
The commitment by leading industrialized and emerging economies "showed their strong attitudes to respond the pandemic together, and this gave investors a sense of relief," said Hideyuki Ishiguro, senior strategist at Daiwa Securities.
