Trump agrees to a ceasefire, and the Japan-Korea stock markets surged! The storage sector's sharp rise drove the Korean stock index to soar over 5%

Zhitung Finance APP learned that after a two-week ceasefire agreement was reached between the U.S. and Iran, the stock markets in Japan and South Korea opened sharply higher. Under the agreement, the U.S. and Israel will pause military operations in exchange for Iran reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

As of the time of publication, the Topix index was up 2.81%, to 3,756.76 points; the Nikkei 225 index was up 4.51%, to 55,837.91 points. South Korea’s KOSPI composite stock index rose 5.33%, to 5,787.76 points. Among them, one of South Korea’s super-weight stocks, HBM storage powerhouse SK Hynix, saw its share price rise by nearly 10%; South Korea’s largest-cap weighted stock—Samsung Electronics, the world’s largest memory chip manufacturer—jumped more than 6%. These two major memory-chip giants are also the core drivers behind the sharp rebound in the South Korean stock market.

Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc.) rose 2.85%, making the largest contribution to the Topix index’s gains. Among the constituent stocks of the index, 1,514 rose, 39 fell, and 99 were unchanged.

After the ceasefire news broke, the Japanese yen strengthened against the U.S. dollar.

Masahiro Ichikawa, chief market strategist at Sumitomo DS Asset Management, said that Trump has listed reopening the Strait of Hormuz as one of the ceasefire conditions, and that this move was “unexpected.”

Ichikawa said: “Although the ceasefire will last only two weeks, it is clearly set to boost investor sentiment.”

Kazunori Tatebe, a strategist at Daiwa Asset Management, said that even though the ceasefire period is only two weeks, it has still raised expectations for making tangible progress during this time. He noted that market attention will very likely return to sectors that were previously sold off due to the Iran conflict, such as cyclical sectors, artificial intelligence, and base metals.