Japanese stock markets are getting battered today but there are better signs trickling out of the US.The Nikkei is trading down 3.5% following a 4.2% rout in the Nasdaq Composite on Friday. I'd expect to see pain around the globe today as the rest of the world plays catch up.There are some better signs beginning to appear in the USA though. S&P 500 futures opened 0.6% lower but Trump has been on a media tour today highlighting that he's asked Israel not to strike back on Iran and saying a deal is close. Futures are now up 0.2%.To be completely fair, he's said the same thing almost every day for the past five weeks. Still, the market has bought those headlines almost every time for five weeks so I guess that's no reason to fight it now. From my perspective, he sounded determined to make a deal and said it could have been finalized this week if not for the flare up.I'm dubious that's the case but how knows.Outside of Japan, the pain is worse with Korean shares halted for 20 minutes after crashing 8.4%. They've since had a big bounce. In the past year (and so far this year) it's been an extremely hot market led by chips, memory names and FOMO. This article was written by Adam Button at investinglive.com.