A look at the day ahead in European and global markets from

Ankur Banerjee

High-stakes earnings from Micron more than delivered by

outlining strong demand for its memory chips and that was enough

to breathe life back into an AI-fuelled rally as investors

shrugged off, for now, worries over valuations and demand.

Markets have cowered in recent days over worries that

valuations for AI-related firms have become stretched following

years of blistering gains with concerns also rising over whether

the massive spending will take too long to pay off.

Micron, the only U.S.-based manufacturer of high bandwidth

memory chips used alongside Nvidia's AI processors, helped ease

some of those concerns as its earnings showed customers had

committed $22 billion to lock in supplies of memory chips.

The firm also said it does not have a sense of when memory

supply will catch up with increasing demand. Good news then also

for Micron's South Korean rivals SK Hynix and

Samsung Electronics ( SSNLF ).

They both surged to take the KOSPI up about 5%, as

the world's best-performing stock market since the start of 2025

takes a wild ride on AI frenzy, fuelled by insatiable retail

enthusiasm.

Not only has this AI rally turned the two South Korean

chipmaking giants into stock market darlings and trillion-dollar

firms, it has also thrust their employees into the top tier of

the country's highly competitive marriage market.

Oil prices are back where they were before war broke out in

the Middle East at the end of February. That could help ease

some inflationary pressure. No one seems to have told bond

traders though, who are still pricing in at least one rate hike

from the Federal Reserve this year.

Those rate-hike bets have led the dollar to a more than

one-year high against a basket of currencies, with the yen

hovering near 40-year lows. It last fetched 161.73 per

U.S. dollar and a break beyond 161.96 would be its lowest since

1986.

The spotlight will turn to U.S. inflation data, the Personal

Consumption Expenditures price index, that could perhaps push

the yen beyond those levels and to the brink of another round of

intervention from Tokyo.

Key developments that could influence markets on Thursday:

Economic events: Germany GfK consumer sentiment for July,

France consumer confidence for June