Asia-Pacific markets rose on Friday, with South Korea’s Kospi hitting a fresh daily high and Japan’s Topix hitting a new all-time high as investors shrugged off renewed Iran-related military activity and focused on gains in tech stocks and record closes on Wall Street.
South Korea’s Kospi jumped more than 3%, hitting a fresh daily high before paring gains slightly. Kosdaq, a small-cap stock, fell 3.17%.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 rose 2.49%, while the Topix rose 1.86%, a new record high.
Shares of Samsung Electronics rose as much as 6.51% after the firm said it has started shipping samples of its latest high-bandwidth memory chip to customers around the world.
India’s Nifty 50 was trading close to flat. In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 rose 0.72%.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index added 1.1%, while the CSI 300 remained unchanged, SEEbiz reports.
Iran’s armed forces reportedly fired missiles at unspecified targets late Thursday, according to state media outlet Fars.
The latest military activity in southern Iran came just hours after the Pentagon said Tehran had fired a ballistic missile toward Kuwait and deployed attack drones in and around the Strait of Hormuz.
Earlier on Thursday, a White House official confirmed an Axios report that the US and Iran had “generally agreed” on the terms of a deal aimed at temporarily ending the three-month conflict.
U.S. futures traded largely unchanged after all three major averages closed at new record highs on Thursday, boosted by gains in the technology sector.
Futures contracts on the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 traded near the unchanged line. Futures contracts related to the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose by 7 points, or less than 0.1%.
The S&P 500 rose 0.58% to 7,563.63, while the Nasdaq Composite rose 0.91% to 26,917.47. Both indices also hit daily records. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.05% at 50,668.97.
Tech stocks rallied on Thursday after a strong earnings outlook from Snowflake revived enthusiasm for the artificial intelligence trade. Shares rose 36.5%, posting their best day ever after the cloud-based data platform provider posted rosy guidance for its fiscal second quarter as well as improved results from the latest quarter. The firm also signed off on a plan to spend $6 billion on Amazon Web Services over five years.
