In other commodities, light sweet crude (WTI) oil futures on the Nymex rose 75 cents or 1.7 percent to $44.80 per barrel while the most active Comex silver contract stood at $19.705 per ounce, up 42.8 cents.
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The euro edged up 0.1 percent to $1.1195 EUR= , having pulled up from Wednesday’s trough of $1.1123.
The U.S. Fed did signal it could hike rates by year-end as the labor market improved further, but cut the number of rate increases expected in 2017 and 2018.
“I think the reality is this is a Fed that is more market-dependant than it is data-dependant”, he added.
U.S. Federal Reserve to announce decision on rate hike late Wednesday. “Higher gold investment demand in Japan is always a positive for gold”. The Malaysian ringgit rise 0.7 percent to 4.1065 versus the greenback.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index rose 1.4 percent to 24,007.40 points and the Shanghai Composite Index advanced 0.7 percent to 3,046.49.
“There are no bargains out there”. The company now has an order book of S$27.7 million, it said.
The value of Canadian wholesale trade rose in July for the fourth consecutive month, posting a 0.3 per cent gain on strength in the motor vehicle and parts subsector, Statistics Canada said.
The dollar fell against all its major peers, extending a slide toward its biggest annual decline in seven years, after the Federal Reserve delayed raising interest rates again, saying more time was needed to assess USA economic conditions. Gold was already firm in earlier trade, along with stock markets, after the Bank of Japan overhauled its monetary policy framework, switching to targeting interest rates and side lining more than three years of massive money printing.
“The BOJ now essentially promises to purchase JGBs for even longer, until inflation exceeds, and not merely meets, its 2 percent inflation target”.
The Nikkei 225 rose 315.47 points, or 1.91 percent, to 16,807.62, up from a modest level of 0.3 percent gain before the decision.
The won jumped 1.7 percent to 1,101.80 per dollar, set for its biggest gain since June. Energy shares were the best performing sector, up 2.1 per cent, as oil prices rose. Japanese markets are closed Thursday for a national holiday. For the year, the benchmark S&P 500 is up 5.8 per cent.
In December 2015, the USA central bank raised rates for the first time since 2006.
Read: What time does the Fed interest-rate decision come out? “When you are comparing things to the low interest rates we have, things can look attractive that wouldn’t look attractive in a normal interest rate environment”.
“If monetary policy has effectively reached its limits, which appears to be the case, greater emphasis will now have to be placed on fiscal policy and structural reform to raise inflation and trend growth”, ANZ Bank economists Tom Kenny and Brian Martin said in a note to investors about the situation in Japan.
“The body language makes it sound like they’re warming people up for December”, said Stephen Massocca, chief investment officer at Wedbush Equity Management in San Francisco.
Traders’ expectations for a December hike rose slightly after the statement, to 59.3 percent from 59.2 percent on Tuesday, according to CME Group’s FedWatch program.
About 7.6 billion shares changed hands on US exchanges, above the 6.8 billion daily average for the past 20 trading days, according to Thomson Reuters data.
Advancing issues outnumbered decliners on the NYSE by 2,136 to 720.
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The dollar index, which measures the greenback’s value against a basket of six major currencies, touched a low of 95.398 .DXY =USD at one point on Thursday, its lowest level since September 16.
