Employees work in the dealing room at Hana Bank's headquarters in Seoul, Friday. Yonhap
KOSPI set another record by surpassing the 8,400 mark on Friday, fueled by easing geopolitical concerns and renewed momentum in artificial intelligence (AI)-related stocks following overnight gains on Wall Street.
The country's benchmark index opened 199.02 points, or 2.43 percent, higher than the previous session at 8,384.31, and maintained its upward momentum to close at 8,476.15, up 290.86 points, or 3.55 percent.
Market sentiment strengthened after media reports said the United States had finalized working-level discussions on a memorandum of understanding aimed at ending the conflict with Iran and had begun circulating a draft among allies, including Israel.
Hopes that ceasefire negotiations were nearing a final settlement also helped ease concerns over oil prices, which had recently weighed on global financial markets. U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures retreated to the $80-per-barrel range.
On Wall Street, AI-focused cloud computing company Snowflake surged 36 percent after raising its annual sales forecast and securing a long-term partnership with Amazon Web Services.
The rally reignited investor appetite for AI-related shares, lifting Nvidia and AMD and pushing the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index up 1 percent.
Upbeat global sentiment spilled over into the Korean market, where most large-cap stocks traded higher, led by semiconductor heavyweights Samsung Electronics and SK hynix.
In particular, Samsung Electronics rose 5.84 percent after announcing before the opening bell that it had begun sample shipments of the 12-layer HBM4E, its seventh-generation high-bandwidth memory chip, marking the world's first shipment of the next-generation AI memory product.
Meanwhile, the secondary Kosdaq index opened 7.79 points, or 0.71 percent, higher from the previous session at 1,112.15, but soon reversed course to close at 1,074.80, down 29.56 points, or 2.68 percent.
Source: Korea Times News
