Passenger planes sit on the tarmac at Dubai International Airport in Dubai on March 11, 2026. Drones fell near Dubai Airport, injuring four people, while ships were hit in or near the Strait of Hormuz on March 11 as Iran continued its campaign to disrupt oil markets and air and sea traffic.
AFP | getty images
Hello, I am Hui Ji writing to you from Singapore. Welcome to another edition of CNBC’s Daily Open.
The oil market was just beginning to stabilize at higher levels due to the fragile ceasefire. Then came another shock: the United Arab Emirates is ready to exit OPEC.
At the same time, warnings about the global economy are intensifying. After billionaire Ray Dalio warned of a recession in the US economy, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon is now sounding the alarm on a potential debt crisis.
Yet the selloff was not due to oil or widespread fears in the market. Instead, chip-related fears over AI demand unsettled investors, a reminder of how deeply embedded this narrative is in their psyche.
What you need to know today
“The only thing predictable about life is its unpredictability.”
It’s an unlikely line from an unlikely source: Remy, the animated rat turned chef in the Pixar film Ratatouille. But it neatly captures the unexpected events of the last 24 hours.
As oil prices began to stabilize due to the US-Iran ceasefire, the market was affected by this news. The United Arab Emirates withdrew from OPEC on 1 May.
The loss of one of its most influential members is likely to lead to greater volatility in oil prices. The UAE, along with Saudi Arabia, was one of the few producers with meaningful spare capacity to influence prices and respond to supply shocks.
George Lyon, head of geopolitical analysis at Rystad Energy, said its exit could leave OPEC “structurally weak”.
Meanwhile, macroeconomic warnings are intensifying. A day after billionaire investor Ray Dalio raised fears of a stagflation in the US economy, Jamie Dimon warned that rising government debt could lead to a crisis in the bond market.
“The way it’s going right now, there will be some kind of bond crisis and then we’ll have to deal with it,” Dimon said.
“Those that are being added to the risk column are at a higher level, such as geopolitics, oil, government deficit,” he said. “They may go away, but they may not go away, and we don’t know what confluence of events causes the problem.”
Given that backdrop, a riskier move in the market may seem inevitable. It came, but not for those reasons.
Instead, stocks retreated from their records due to a chip selloff following a report The Wall Street Journal said OpenAI has fallen short of its own projections in terms of user growth and revenue.
The miss has raised internal concerns about whether the company can sustain the massive financial commitments required to build data centers and secure long-term computing capacity.
The reaction underscores a shift in market psychology: While geopolitics and macro risks loom large, it is the AI narrative that continues to drive sentiment and volatility.
In other words, the rat was right: predictably unpredictable!
– Lim Hui Ji
And finally…
‘Draconian development’ in Meta-Manus deal draws line in China’s AI race with US
China’s decision to block US tech giant Meta’s $2 billion acquisition of artificial intelligence startup Manus is being seen by analysts as a warning to tech entrepreneurs.
“Obviously after Manusgate, founders will find that if you start in China, you’ll stay in China,” said Duncan Clark, an early adopter of Alibaba and president of consultancy firm BDA China.
“We knew the deal was already in jeopardy,” he said, “but this drastic development is on the more extreme side of the potential consequences.”
-Evelyn Cheng
