Chips, SoftBank, and a Historic IPO Drive Global Markets Higher This Week

A Chip-Fueled Rally Sweeps From Wall Street to Tokyo

It was a week that belonged to the semiconductor sector. On Thursday, July 10, U.S. stocks closed broadly higher as chipmakers surged and oil prices eased, setting the stage for a strong finish to the trading week. The S&P 500 rallied on Thursday as semiconductor stocks rebounded and oil prices eased, closing at 7,543.64 — a gain of 0.81%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite climbed 1.3%, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average put on more than 0.2%. The AI trade, it seems, is not finished running.

Chip stocks remained the market's biggest source of strength. The VanEck Semiconductor ETF rose 2.5%, while Micron gained 4.5% and Sandisk jumped 7.6%. The gains weren't just a one-day blip, either. While chip stocks have seen some pressure recently, they've had a massive run-up in 2026. Micron has already surged more than 200%, and Lam Research, Marvell Technology, and Intel have all more than doubled year to date.

SoftBank Soars as Asia Rides the Wave

The excitement wasn't contained to American markets. Asian tech stocks surged on Friday, July 11, tracking the previous session's U.S. chip rally. Japanese and South Korean tech stocks surged, tracking the rally in U.S. chipmakers. Japan's SoftBank Group advanced over 11%, while chip equipment makers Advantest and Renesas Electronics gained 3.9% and 3%, respectively. Tokyo Electron was up 4%. Among South Korean technology names, Samsung SDI advanced 8.3% and Seoul Semiconductor gained 5.9%. Samsung Electronics was 4.3% higher, and display panel producer LG Display rose 4.4%.

Memory chip major SK Hynix added 1.3% in Seoul, ahead of the company's U.S. market debut. The company has seen its stock soar more than sevenfold over the past year due to the global memory crunch. Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index rose 0.45%, while mainland China's CSI 300 gained 0.33% on Friday. Morgan Stanley noted in a report that Hong Kong and Chinese equities had outperformed regional and global peers over the past week.

SK Hynix Makes History on the Nasdaq

Perhaps the week's single most dramatic event was the U.S. stock market debut of South Korean memory chip giant SK Hynix. SK Hynix American depositary receipts jumped 12.8% above their offering price after raising $26.5 billion in the largest-ever U.S. listing by a foreign company. The Icheon, South Korea-based company is the world's largest producer of high-bandwidth memory chips that power artificial intelligence processors from companies including Nvidia and AMD. The listing underscored just how central the AI infrastructure buildout has become to global capital markets.

On Friday, Nvidia supported the S&P 500's move higher, rising around 4%. Meta Platforms was another bright spot in tech, jumping about 6%, notching its best weekly performance since early 2024. The S&P 500 rose on Friday to notch a weekly gain, ending the day up 0.42% at 7,575.39, while the Nasdaq Composite added 0.29% to close at 26,281.61. The Dow Jones Industrial Average increased 149.60 points to settle at 52,637.01.

Geopolitics Lurks, but Bulls Stay in Charge

The rally unfolded against a tense geopolitical backdrop. Stocks rose as markets shrugged off U.S.-Iran tensions that saw the two sides trade new attacks, putting a fragile truce to the test. The fighting intensified as the U.S. launched airstrikes on 90 Iranian targets, and Iran retaliated by striking targets in U.S.-allied Middle East countries. Cooling oil prices helped improve risk appetite after President Donald Trump said Iran had reached out seeking negotiations, while officials from Qatar and Pakistan continued efforts to restart talks between Washington and Tehran.

Not everyone is euphoric, however. "There's been so much euphoria around the AI boom going all the way back to the summer of 2023," said Eric Parnell, chief market strategist at Great Valley Advisor Group. "We're clearly in a boom phase right now, but I do have genuine concerns about some sort of bust coming in the second half of the year." With major bank earnings — including JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, and Bank of America — scheduled for the week of July 14 , markets will soon have a fresh test of whether the AI-fueled optimism is grounded in