European stock markets mostly pushed higher on Thursday despite the Federal Reserve indicating its intention to maintain a policy of aggressive US interest-rate hikes to bring down the highest inflation in decades.
The dollar steadied and oil prices recovered further from sharp losses earlier in the week.
"Closely watched minutes of the last Federal Reserve meeting show US central bank policymakers are set to stay firmly on the path of rate rises," noted Susannah Streeter, senior investment and markets analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown.
While policymakers said they would eventually have to start tempering their tightening pace, they said they would keep borrowing costs elevated "for some time", though admitted there was a risk of going too far and damaging the economy.
The minutes, released on Wednesday, dampened hopes that after a period of quick, sharp increases this year, the bank could possibly begin lowering them in 2023 once inflation was coming down.
Bets on a more dovish approach in the new year had been boosted by data showing US inflation came down quicker than expected in July. That helped drive a rally in equities from their June lows and weighed on the dollar.
But the realisation that policy would likely stay restrictive undermined the sense of optimism, pushing all three indices on Wall Street down on Wednesday with the tech-heavy Nasdaq taking the biggest hit.
Asian traders on Thursday appeared increasingly worried that the Fed would slip up as it tries to bring down inflation without causing another recession in the world's biggest economy. Tokyo, Hong Kong, Sydney, Shanghai, Seoul, Taipei, Mumbai, Wellington and Bangkok were down, though Singapore, Manila and Jakarta edged up.
Asian traders on Thursday appeared increasingly worried that the Fed would slip up as it tries to bring down inflation without causing another recession in the world's biggest economy
"The key takeaway from these minutes would appear to show that there is little inclination on the part of anyone on the (policy board) to even look at the possibility of rate cuts," said Michael Hewson at CMC Markets.
He added that they "chime with more recent comments from Fed officials which suggest that we could see at least another" 1.5 percentage points in rate rises by the end of the year.
Norway's central bank on Thursday raised interest rates by half a percentage point to 1.75 per cent, and flagged another hike in September.