Asia-Pacific markets experienced an uptick on Friday, highlighted by South Korea’s Kospi achieving a new intraday record and Japan’s Topix attaining an all-time high. This movement occurred as investors chose to overlook the resurgence of military activity concerning Iran, instead concentrating on advancements in technology stocks and the record closings observed on Wall Street. South Korea’s Kospi surged over 3% to finish at 8,476.15, reaching a new intra-day peak before slightly reducing its gains. The small-cap Kosdaq experienced a decline of 2.68%, settling at 1,074.8. Japan’s Nikkei 225 increased by 2.53%, concluding the trading day at 66,329.5, while the Topix advanced by 1.41% to achieve a new record high of 3,957.17.

Samsung Electronics experienced a notable increase of more than 5% in its share price following the announcement that it has commenced the global shipment of samples of its latest high-bandwidth memory chip to customers. In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 experienced an increase of 1.62%, concluding the trading session at 8,731.7. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index experienced an increase of 0.55% during the final hour of trading, whereas the CSI 300 saw a decline of 0.45%, settling at 4,892.12. India’s Nifty 50 experienced a decline of 0.5%. Iran’s armed forces reportedly launched missiles at unidentified targets late Thursday, as reported by the state media outlet Fars. The recent military operations in southern Iran occurred shortly after the Pentagon reported that Tehran had launched a ballistic missile aimed at Kuwait and had positioned attack drones in and around the Strait of Hormuz.

Earlier on Thursday, a White House official confirmed a report stating that the U.S. and Iran had “mostly agreed” on the terms of a deal intended to temporarily halt the three-month conflict. U.S. futures hovered around unchanged levels following a session in which all three major averages achieved new closing records on Thursday, driven by a surge in the technology sector. S&P 500 futures and Nasdaq 100 futures were trading close to unchanged levels. Futures associated with the Dow Jones Industrial Average increased by 7 points, representing a change of less than 0.1%. The S&P 500 gained 0.58% to 7,563.63, while the Nasdaq Composite rose 0.91% to 26,917.47. Both indexes reached intraday all-time highs. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was higher by 0.05% at 50,668.97.

Tech stocks experienced a rally on Thursday, fuelled by a robust earnings outlook from Snowflake that rekindled enthusiasm for the AI sector. Shares surged by 36.5%, marking their most significant single-day increase to date, following the optimistic fiscal second-quarter guidance provided by the cloud-based data platform provider, alongside a surpassing performance on both revenue and earnings in the most recent quarter. The company also established a plan to allocate $6 billion towards Amazon Web Services over a five-year period.