Market anxiety is heightening as surging oil prices stemming from the Middle East conflict overlap with a retaliatory tariff war between the U.S. and Canada. The combination of rising raw material costs and deepening trade tensions is weighing heavily on investor sentiment.
International crude oil and U.S. gasoline prices surge due to the war in Iran and the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.
Trade tensions escalate as Canada imposes retaliatory tariffs of up to 50% on U.S. goods.
Copper futures hit an all-time high driven by U.S. tariff concerns and supply disruptions.
Iran and Oman reach the final stages of a joint management agreement to designate temporary safe transit lanes in the Strait of Hormuz.
Retail capital inflows into government bonds surge, seeking higher yields over bank deposits following the Bank of Japan's rate hike.
Political uncertainty in Europe widens as the far-right AfD party wins a landslide victory in German state elections.
Corporate delistings surge following the Tokyo Stock Exchange's tightening of listing requirements.
Strong buying interest is flowing into the semiconductor and nuclear power sectors as the debut of OpenAI's new AI model and expectations for U.S. nuclear power investments significantly boost investor risk appetite.
The KOSPI index surged 4.61% to close at 6,995.39 points, driven by positive momentum from the release of OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra and large-scale foreign buying.
Expectations for U.S. nuclear investment policy expanded as the government briefed a party-government consultation on South Korea-U.S. negotiations to build eight large nuclear power plants in the United States.
The KOSPI index breached the 7,000-point mark intraday as strength in nuclear power stocks and momentum in large-cap semiconductor equities persisted.
Forecasts for expanding demand in HBM and high-performance memory semiconductors gained visibility due to advances in agentic AI following the release of OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra.
Calls for regulatory reform intensified as domestic active ETFs faced consecutive delistings for failing to meet the current requirement to maintain a correlation coefficient of 0.7.
