Stock market today: Asian markets forge higher after Fed's first rate cut in over 4 years

Asian markets forged higher on Thursday after the Federal Reserve kicked off its efforts to prevent a recession in the U.S.with a bigger-than-usual cut to interest rates.In Tokyo, the Nikkei 225 index jumped 2.5% to 37,284.43.

Hong Kong's Hang Seng gained 1% to 17,840.93.The Shanghai Composite index climbed 0.8% to 2,738.19, while Taiwan's Taiex was up 1%.South Korea's index was an outlier, losing 0.3% to 2,566.65.

The Bank of Japan and the Bank of England are also holding monetary policy meetings this week.Neither central bank is expected to move on rates, though the language of what the officials say could be an indicator of later moves and still influence markets.Because the Fed's half-percentage point rate cut was so well telegraphed and because markets had already climbed so much in anticipation, Wall Street’s reactions to the 180-degree turn on its policy rate were relatively muted.

“Markets barely reacted to the Fed’s 50 (basis point) rate cut, on balance, and our base case is that further cuts won’t move the needle too much either,” Thomas Mathews of Capital Economics said in a commentary.It was the first cut to the federal funds rate in over four years, ending a stretch where the Fed kept rates at a two-decade high to slow the U.S.

economy enough to stifle the worst inflation in generations.On Wednesday, the S&P 500 slipped 0.3%, closing at 5,618.26.The Dow Jones Industrial Average dipped 0.2% to 41,503.10.

The Nasdaq composite lost 0.3% to 17,573.30.The momentous move by the Fed helps financial markets in two big ways.It eases the brakes off the economy, which has been slowing under the weight of higher rates, and it gives a boost to prices for all kinds of investments.

Besides stocks, gold and bond prices had already rallied in recent months on expectations that rate cuts were coming.Now that inflation has eased significantly from its peak two summers ago and appears to be heading toward 2%, the Fed says it it can turn more of its att...