By Gina Lee

Investing.com – Asia Pacific stocks were mostly down on Thursday morning, as investors continued to digest that indicated the .

Japan’s rose 0.83% by 9:03 PM ET (2:03 AM GMT). South Korea’s was down 0.55%, with the hiking its interest rate to 1% as it handed down its policy decision earlier in the day.

The Australian economy saw a decrease of 0.6%.

Hong Kong’s was down 0.52%

China’s edged down 0.16% and the inched down 0.03%.

The U.S. market is closed on Thursday due to a holiday.

The Fed’s minutes from its latest meeting, released on Wednesday, indicated that the central bank was open to speeding up the pace of asset tapering.

“Various participants noted that the Federal Open Market Committee should be prepared to adjust the pace of asset purchases and raise the target range for the federal funds rate sooner than participants currently anticipated if inflation continued to run higher,” according to the minutes.

“These minutes were hawkish,” TD Securities global head of rates strategy Priya Misra told Bloomberg.

“The market has moved the timing of the first-rate hike now to June of 2022 which implies this earlier end to QE is already priced in. The market is going to struggle until we get more data.”

Mary Daly from San Francisco Fed said that asset tapering would not be impeded if consumer and labor prices data are still better than they were.

U.S. data was released Wednesday before Thursday’s holiday and showed that 2.1% of the quarter-on-quarter GDP growth in the third quarter. A total of 199,000 filings were made during the week, which was the lowest since 1969.

Andrew Bailey, Governor of Bank of England will be speaking at an event hosted by the Cambridge Union later that day.

Meanwhile, events in Mexico are also on investors’ radars. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador nominated Victoria Rodríguez Ceja to head the Bank of Mexico, having withdrawn his previous nominee, former finance minister Arturo Herrera.