Asian markets closed higher on Friday, with key indices in South Korea and Japan reaching record highs. Investors demonstrated resilience, looking past renewed military activity involving Iran and focusing instead on positive tech sector performance and hopes for a temporary U.S.-Iran deal.
The optimism was partly fueled by a strong earnings outlook from Snowflake, which significantly boosted U.S. tech stocks and contributed to record closes on Wall Street.
Asian Markets Climb as Investors Weigh Iran Tensions Against Potential U.S.-Iran Deal
Key Takeaways
- Asia-Pacific markets advanced, with investors overlooking renewed Iran tensions in favor of ceasefire optimism.
- U.S. stocks reached record highs following a surge in AI sentiment driven by Snowflake's performance.
Asia-Pacific markets experienced a significant upswing on Friday, marked by South Korea's Kospi hitting a fresh intraday record and Japan's Topix achieving a new all-time high. Investors largely disregarded heightened military activity involving Iran, shifting their focus to strong performance in technology shares and the record closes seen on Wall Street.
The South Korean Kospi surged by over 3%, briefly touching a new intraday high before settling slightly lower. In contrast, the small-cap Kosdaq saw a decline of 3.17%.
Japan's Nikkei 225 posted a gain of 2.49%, while the Topix advanced by 1.86%, setting a new record. This surge was partly fueled by a remarkable 6.51% jump in Samsung Electronics shares after the company announced it had commenced global shipments of its latest high-bandwidth memory chip samples to customers.
India's Nifty 50 traded near the flatline, while Australia's S&P/ASX 200 rose by 0.72%. Hong Kong's Hang Seng index added 1.1%, and the CSI 300 remained unchanged.
The geopolitical landscape saw reports of Iran's armed forces firing missiles at unspecified targets late Thursday, according to the state media outlet Fars. This occurred shortly after the Pentagon indicated Tehran had launched a ballistic missile toward Kuwait and deployed attack drones in and around the Strait of Hormuz.
Despite these tensions, earlier on Thursday, a White House official confirmed an Axios report suggesting that the U.S. and Iran had largely agreed on the terms of a temporary ceasefire to halt the three-month conflict.
U.S. stock futures traded near the flatline. This followed a strong performance on Thursday, where all three major averages closed at new records, driven by a robust rally in the technology sector. S&P 500 futures and Nasdaq 100 futures were trading near unchanged, while futures tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average saw a modest increase of 7 points, or less than 0.1%.
On Thursday, the S&P 500 gained 0.58% to close at 7,563.63, and the Nasdaq Composite rose 0.91% to 26,917.47, with both indexes also reaching intraday all-time highs. The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished higher by 0.05% at 50,668.97.
The tech sector's rally was significantly boosted by Snowflake's impressive performance. The company's shares soared 36.5%, marking their best trading day ever, after issuing optimistic fiscal second-quarter guidance and exceeding top and bottom-line expectations in its latest quarter. Snowflake also announced a five-year plan to spend $6 billion on Amazon Web Services.
