The market’s latest rally is running on two engines at once: a fresh Iran ceasefire extension and a powerful tech-led rebound in U.S. stocks. Japan’s Nikkei 225 and South Korea’s Kospi both hit records in early trading, while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq also set new highs overnight. Oil refused to cooperate with the peace trade, with Brent crude topping $100 as Iran seized ships in the Strait of Hormuz and kept the geopolitical risk premium alive.
That tension is what has Wall Street uneasy even as prices keep climbing. Bank of America’s derivatives team says U.S. equities are moving deeper into a “bubble-like regime,” with the Nasdaq-100 stringing together an unusually long run of gains and semiconductors flashing froth. The same note says other pockets, including the Kospi and commodity benchmarks, are already showing extreme bubble-like dynamics. In plain English, investors are buying growth, chips and momentum while a war premium keeps pressing on energy and transport costs.
Japan’s move had a familiar cast, with tech shares doing the heavy lifting. SoftBank Group rose more than 6 percent as the Nikkei set an intraday record, and Samsung Electronics hit a fresh high after South Korea posted faster-than-expected first-quarter growth. The Korean economy expanded 1.7 percent from the previous quarter, its fastest pace since 2020, giving the rally a real earnings-and-growth backstop rather than just a geopolitics sugar high.
There is still plenty of fragility in the setup. U.S. futures were softer after Wednesday’s surge, and Tesla’s post-earnings reversal showed how quickly strong numbers can be overshadowed by a bad read from management. Add in the NFL’s warning about prediction markets and the broader spread of speculative trading, and the message is the same across asset classes: liquidity is still rewarding risk, but the market is getting noisier and more vulnerable to shocks if the Iran truce unravels or earnings disappoint.
