Stocks in Europe reached record highs on Thursday, buoyed by optimism in Britain over easing lockdown restrictions, while a benign outlook for U.S. interest rates was set to push Wall Street to new heights.

The European STOXX index of leading 600 companies rose 0.3, hitting a new high of 436.66 points. Londons blue chip FTSE 100 index was up 0.2.

Its looking good as evaluations in Europe are much lower than they are in the U.S. so there is potentially more upside. The line of least resistance for European markets is higher, said Michael Hewson, chief market analyst at CMC Markets.

In terms of economic reopening, there is enough optimism built in at the moment to drive markets quite a bit higher from here, and the Fed has reiterated its going to remain on hold for a while, Hewson said.

Minutes of the Federal Reserves last policy meeting, published on Wednesday, showed members felt the economy was still far short of target and were in no rush to scale back their 120 billion a month of bond buying.

Fed Chairman Jerome Powell speaks at an International Monetary Fund event later on Thursday and is likely to reiterate the dovish outlook.

The European Central Bank was due to publish accounts for its March 11 policy meeting amid debate about when it should start tapering its pandemic stimulus, with the euro area recovery still in doubt.

Wall Street was also set to reach fresh peaks on Thursday with emini futures on the SP 500 rising 0.25 after rising to a record high, and…