HONG KONG — Asian markets surged Friday, following a strong rally on Wall Street, while oil prices moved lower after U.S. President Donald Trump said progress had been made in talks aimed at ending the war in Iran.
U.S. stock futures also pointed modestly higher.
In South Korea, the Kospi soared 7.8% to 8,370.82, trimming some of the losses seen earlier this month during a sell-off in artificial intelligence-related shares. The benchmark index has nearly doubled over the past six months and reached a record closing high of 8,801.49 on June 2.
Samsung Electronics, the country’s largest listed company, climbed 11.2%, while chipmaker SK Hynix added 7.2%.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 rose 3.5% to 66,442.95, with technology stocks again leading the advance. SoftBank Group, the investment giant with major exposure to AI, gained 2%, and chip equipment manufacturer Tokyo Electron surged 10.3%.
Elsewhere in the region, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index advanced 1.8% to 24,689.32, while China’s Shanghai Composite added 1.6% to close at 4,050.51.
In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 traded 1.9% higher to 8,798.10.
Taiwan’s Taiex gained 2.6%, while India’s Sensex advanced 1.2%.
The renewed investor optimism came after Trump said Thursday he had called off military strikes against Iran. He asserted that the U.S. had made “a great settlement of the war with Iran,” adding that an extension of the shaky ceasefire between the two sides could be finalized in “the next few days.” Few details were offered.
Global markets retreated earlier in the week as tensions between the U.S. and Iran escalated. High oil prices have added to inflationary pressures globally as the Strait of Hormuz, a key waterway for the world’s oil and gas transit, remained largely closed.
“Trump has said many times before that a deal is very close, only for hostilities to resume,” ING commodities analysts Warren Patterson and Ewa Manthey wrote in a note on Friday. “However, there does appear to be more positive noise around the deal this time.”
“(But) we would be cautious about assuming that the extension of the ceasefire is a done deal,” they added. “Even if it is, it could be fragile.”
Brent crude oil, the international standard, fell 1.7% to $88.87 per barrel early Friday. That was still much higher than the roughly $70 a barrel level it was at before the war began in late February.
Benchmark U.S. crude shed 1.6% to $86.33 a barrel.
On Thursday, Wall Street’s benchmark S&P 500 surged 1.8% to 7,394.30, back to where it was in early May. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rallied 1.9% to 50,848.75, and the technology-heavy Nasdaq composite climbed 2.5% to 25,809.66.
Prices of AI and other tech stocks have been volatile the past week in part due to renewed worries that massive investments and soaring share prices are creating a bubble liable to burst. On Thursday, U.S. chipmaker Marvell Technology climbed 11.1%, but technology company Oracle lost 8.5% on worries over its high spending, despite strong-than-expected quarterly results.
Investors in the U.S. and elsewhere are also awaiting the big debut Friday on Wall Street of SpaceX, Elon Musk’s rocket company, which is set to become the largest IPO on record, raising around $75 billion.
In other dealings early Friday, the U.S. dollar rose to 160.22 Japanese yen from 159.93 yen. The euro was trading at $1.1574, down from $1.1578.
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AP Business Writers Stan Choe and Alex Veiga contributed to this report.
