Asian-Pacific markets experienced a significant rally on Friday, with South Korea’s Kospi and Japan’s Topix reaching new all-time highs. Investors appeared to shrug off recent reports of military activity in Iran, choosing instead to focus on positive momentum in the technology sector and the record-breaking performance of U.S. markets. The optimism was further fueled by hopes for a potential ceasefire in the ongoing regional conflict.

In South Korea, the Kospi index saw a notable jump of over 3%, while Japan’s Nikkei 225 and Topix indices also posted strong gains. A major driver for the positive sentiment was Samsung Electronics, which saw its shares surge by more than 6% following the announcement that it has begun shipping samples of its latest high-bandwidth memory chips to global customers. Meanwhile, other regional markets, including Hong Kong’s Hang Seng and Australia’s S&P/ASX 200, also trended upward.

This regional growth follows a strong session on Wall Street, where the S&P 500, Nasdaq Composite, and Dow Jones Industrial Average all closed at record highs. The rally was largely propelled by a surge in technology stocks, specifically Snowflake. The cloud-based data provider saw its shares climb over 36% after issuing a robust fiscal outlook and announcing a multi-billion dollar commitment to Amazon Web Services, effectively reigniting investor enthusiasm for artificial intelligence-related assets.