Nikkei: Best performance in 34 years

Japan's Nikkei 225 index rise 2.06% on Thursday to set a new 34-year high at 36.863 points. The year-to-date gain of the Japanese index was more than 10%, helped by the Bank of Japan's ultra-soft monetary policy and the weakening yen.

This followed a bullish close on Wall Street, where the S&P 500 Index set new all-time highs at around 5.000 points. Technology stocks again led the gains, which also allowed the Nasdaq to set a new record high at 15.756 late in the day.

Read more about the new S&P record

After the U.S. market closed, among the notable developments was a significant rise in results for chip maker Arm in the OTC market, up more than 20%. In addition, Disney's results rose 6%, beating expectations.

In this sense, one of the main beneficiaries of Arm's growth is Softbank, the Japanese conglomerate which is the company's largest shareholder and which is up 11%.

In addition, Bank of Japan Deputy Governor Shinichi Uchida said that the BOJ is not expected to actively raise interest rates even after the negative rate policy ends.

Other Asian markets also saw gains, albeit more subdued than in Japan. Australia's ASX and South Korea's Kospi rose less than 0.3%, while Hong Kong's Hang Seng fell more than 1%; and China's Shanghai Composite rose nearly 1%, helped by regulators' measures to stabilize the stock market, including the firing of the chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission.