Despite news of the U.S. maintaining an “indefinite” blockade of Iranian ports, Wall Street experienced a record-breaking rally, with the S&P 500 hitting new intraday and closing highs.
Globally, the UK economy shows robust growth, while South Korea’s Kospi market has rebounded into bull territory, albeit with questions about the rally’s longevity. The technology sector, particularly AI, is seeing significant developments in financing and executive changes.
Markets Rally Amid 'Indefinite' Iran War Stance; Global Economies Show Mixed Signals
By Anniek Bao
Despite concerns over an extended conflict in Iran, Wall Street surged to record highs. Meanwhile, the UK economy shows resilience, South Korea's market rebounds, and the AI sector navigates financing and leadership shifts.
Key Points
- U.S. can hold its blockade of Iranian ports "indefinitely."
- S&P 500 set intraday and closing records above 7,800.
- U.K. GDP expanded 0.4% in Q2, on track for G7's fastest growth.
- South Korea's Kospi enters a bull market, raising questions about sustainability.
Hello, this is Anniek Bao writing to you from Singapore. Welcome to another edition of CNBC's Daily Open.
Six months into the Iran war, Washington has stopped talking about when it ends.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in Panama that the U.S. Navy can maintain its blockade of Iranian ports indefinitely, rotating warships in and out of the region as needed.
Wall Street heard that and bought stocks anyway. S&P 500 set intraday record above 7,800 and also notched a closing record, on track for its third straight weekly advance.
What you need to know today
Markets often climb a wall of worry. On Thursday, they climbed a naval blockade.
The S&P 500 closed at a record high of 7,798.99, after notching an all-time intraday high, while the Nasdaq Composite added 0.81% to 26,803.03. Futures were little changed, with two of the three major benchmarks heading for a third straight winning week.
Brent crude for October delivery, which fell more than 2% to settle at $87.07 a barrel on Thursday, was slightly higher in early Asia trading Friday. U.S. West Texas Intermediate futures, which fell to $81.25 overnight, were also trading marginally higher Friday.
The slight gains follow Hegseth's latest statement on the blockade of Iranian ports. "Indefinitely the United States Navy can maintain a blockade like that because we'll rotate ships in and out, as we have, and we'll continue to," Hegseth told reporters on Thursday, according to Reuters.
A war toll still lurking
The U.K. economy is showing further signs of a long-awaited rebound, but the outlook has been complicated by the fallout from the Iran war and high energy prices.
Its GDP expanded 0.4% in the second quarter after 0.6% in the first, keeping it on track to be the G7's fastest-growing economy for a second straight quarter. Sanjay Raja, Deutsche Bank chief U.K. economist, called the first-half annualized pace of 2% "scorching."
But can it remain hot for an extended period? The IMF had warned in April that the Iran war would damage Britain's growth more than any other rich country's — it imports a large amount of its oil and gas, and pump prices are already eating into household incomes.
Seoul's round trip
Away from the war, Asia's chip trade has just done something remarkable and slightly unnerving.
The Kospi entered a technical bull market Thursday, rebounding more than 20% from its July 30 low, after a rout driven partly by leveraged positions and forced selling pushed it into bear-market territory last month.
The speed of the turnaround underscores the massive volatility in tech stocks and raises the question of how long the rally would sustain.
"Korea's equity market is basically synonymous with the AI hardware trade at this point," said Phillip Wool, head of research at Rayliant Global Advisors.
AI's musical chairs
Investor meetings and executive departures have dominated AI news this week, shifting attention from model capability to the industry's financing and leadership.
Anthropic CFO Krishna Rao is leading early meetings with prospective investors ahead of a potential IPO, though the conversations haven't covered financials or a valuation, sources told CNBC's David Faber. The company in June filed confidentially for its IPO, after a May round valued it at $965 billion.
OpenAI, meanwhile, lost chief revenue officer Denise Dresser after eight months — days after longtime executive Brad Lightcap announced his exit.
And Mark Zuckerberg open-sourced Meta's most powerful model, arguing that concentrating AI in a few hands is "inherently problematic" — a line aimed squarely at OpenAI and Anthropic.
Tim Cook, for his part, spent Thursday cutting a ribbon in Houston with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick at a plant that has already shipped its first AI servers.
For now, the Iran war has become quite like weather: traders check the forecast every morning and assess if they need to brace for inclement conditions or can march ahead without an umbrella.
And finally...
An inside look at SK Hynix $720 billion AI-fueled buildout that's taking over South Korea
In South Korea, where a mountainous landscape makes building huge projects an incredible undertaking, the world's leading maker of high-bandwidth computer memory is investing $720 billion on what it says will be the largest network of memory factories in the world.
SK Hynix, whose market cap has jumped more than fivefold in the past year and now tops $1 trillion, is making a big bet that extreme demand from artificial intelligence is here to stay. Soaring prices exacerbated by capacity constraints are changing the fabric of the classic boom-and-bust industry, with AI chip giants like Nvidia willing to take on more risk as they scramble to secure supply.
— Katie Tarasov
