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LONDON (AFP) – Europe's main stock markets accelerated opening gains on Thursday, as investors welcomed news that the US Federal Reserve launched a second wave of quantitative easing measures overnight.

In morning trade, London's benchmark FTSE 100 index of top shares leapt 1.74 percent to 5,849.01 points, Frankfurt's DAX 30 added 1.42 percent to 6,711.69 points and in Paris the CAC 40 soared 1.99 percent to 3,919.48.

At the same time, the US dollar plunged to the lowest level against the euro for more than nine months on the back of the move.

"Although the Federal Reserve's decision to pump further funds into the US economy hardly came as a surprise, it certainly seems to have kick-started the equity market this morning," said ETX Capital trader Manoj Ladwa.

"The FTSE has smashed through the previous high of 5,800 points and with the positive momentum, 6000 seems to be the next level for traders to gun for."

Asian equities also responded positively after the Fed announced overnight that it will launch a new 600-billion-dollar (423-billion-euro) asset-buying plan, known as quantitative easing (QE), to bolster the sluggish US recovery.

Tokyo soared 2.17 percent in value and Shanghai added 1.85 percent to finish close to a seven-month peak.

The US central bank's move was slightly higher than market expectations for around 500 billion dollars of additional QE measures.

However, sentiment remained cautious in Europe ahead of interest rate announcements from the Bank of England and the European Central Bank later on Thursday.

"The Fed chose to abstain from doing harm to the markets by announcing QE2 details roughly in line with what the majority of market participants have been expecting all along," said Societe Generale analyst Vincent Chaigneau.

Wall Street won some ground on Wednesday as traders weighed the Fed's multi-billion-dollar move, alongside a Republican victory in Congress.

The blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.24 percent to close at 11,215.13 points.

The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) said Wednesday it would buy up new Treasury debt at a rate of around 75 billion dollars a month, a scale not seen since the depths of the 2008-2009 economic crisis.

While the Fed took similar measures during the crisis and has rolled over those expiring purchases, the expanded spending is unprecedented when the economy is not teetering on the edge of collapse.

The move followed Tuesday's mid-term elections in which control of the House of Representatives shifted to Republicans, who have called for less government interference in the US economy.

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