U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell speaks during a press conference following the Federal Open Market Committee meeting at the Federal Reserve Board Building in Washington, DC, on March 18, 2026.<\/p>\n
Brendan Smialowski | Afp | Getty Images<\/p>\n
Hello, this is Dylan writing to you from Singapore. Welcome to another edition of CNBC’s Daily Open.<\/p>\n
U.S. markets saw sharp declines on Wednesday, as inflation data and Fed signals added to market distress over Iran. There were some bullish AI signs, however.<\/p>\n
What you need to know today<\/p>\n The Dow Jones Industrial Average on Wednesday fell more than 750 points<\/a> to hit a new low for the year, with the index on pace for its worst month since 2022.\u00a0<\/p>\n That came after the Federal Reserve held rates steady<\/a>. Policy makers signaled inflation concerns and uncertain impacts amid the Iran war, dashing hopes for swift cuts.\u00a0<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Fed Chair Jerome Powell says he will continue to serve<\/a> as head of the central bank if his nominated successor, Kevin Warsh, is not confirmed by the time his term is up in May.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Fed will continue to monitor factors such as energy prices, with Iran missiles inflicting extensive damage<\/a> on Qatar’s Ras Laffan natural gas facility on Wednesday, further threatening energy supply disruptions.<\/p>\n In an attempt to stabilize oil markets, President Donald Trump issued a 60-day waiver<\/a> of the Jones Act \u2014 a longstanding shipping law that requires the transport of goods between U.S. ports to be conducted by American vessels.<\/p>\n Gas prices aren’t the only ones rising; memory chip prices are also surging amid intense AI demand. That saw American memory chipmaker Micron’s revenue almost tripling<\/a> in the latest quarter.<\/p>\n Demand for artificial intelligence is also boosting companies in China, with tech giant Tencent reporting full-year revenue<\/a> that topped analyst predictions, as it continues to ramp up AI investments. <\/p>\n In another bullish sign for AI in China, policymakers and tech companies have been\u00a0pushing widespread adoption<\/a> of the open-source AI agent OpenClaw. Amid market excitement for OpenClaw, shares of some of China’s “AI Tigers” surged <\/a>on Wednesday.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u2014 Dylan Butts <\/p>\n And finally…Choose CNBC as your preferred source on Google and never miss a moment from the most trusted name in business news.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell speaks during a press conference following the Federal Open Market Committee meeting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":392771,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[174],"tags":[170283,170274,491,79,207,179,18,19,157631,18929,17,49672,157630,5129,162916,188,21958,146847,384,162915,4054],"class_list":["post-392770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-lco26k","tag-ng26j","tag-breaking-news-markets","tag-business","tag-business-news","tag-economy","tag-eire","tag-ie","tag-invesco-qqq-trust","tag-iran","tag-ireland","tag-ishares-msci-china-etf","tag-ishares-semiconductor-etf","tag-jerome-powell","tag-lp","tag-markets","tag-micron-technology-inc","tag-tencent-music-entertainment-group","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-oil-fund","tag-world-markets"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116254511262845922","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=392770"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392770\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/392771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=392770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=392770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=392770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}