Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell has tempered his hawkish tone and claimed that inflation has turned the corner, endorsing the market’s belief that the Fed’s cycle of rising interest rates is almost complete and a soft landing is within reach.

The Australian dollar jumped to an eight-month high of US71.57¢ and stocks rallied to a nine-month peak, putting the S&P/ASX 200 briefly within 100 points of its August 2021 record high. The interest rate-sensitive Nasdaq rallied 2 per cent and Meta shares surged 20 per cent in after-hours trading.