President Donald Trump on stage as gun shots heard at the White House Correspondents Dinner in Washington, D.C. on April 25th, 2026.
Hello, this is Hui Jie writing to you from Singapore. Welcome to another edition of CNBC’s Daily Open.
The attempted shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner dominated headlines over the weekend, with details continuing to trickle in.
Meanwhile, employment worries grow following AI-fueled job losses in Meta and Microsoft — but in a twist of irony, OpenAI is reported to be the new favorite destination of tech executives.
What you need to know today
The White House Correspondents Association Dinner is one of the most high-profile events for Washington reporters.
That event took a worrying turn after a man armed with multiple weapons charged a security checkpoint at the dinner on Saturday stateside before being apprehended by U.S. Secret Service agents.
The suspect in the attack was Cole Allen, 31, from Torrance, California, and according to a New York Post report of Allen’s writings, U.S. administration officials were his primary targets.
U.S. President Donald Trump said one officer was shot, but he was “saved by the fact that he was wearing obviously a very good bulletproof vest.”
Outside of the U.S., Trump has his hands full as he deals with the Iran conflict. Plans for a second round of peace talks came apart after the U.S. president cancelled plans to send U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner to Pakistan for negotiations with the Iranians — who had already expressed unwillingness to engage with the U.S.
The development stoked energy worries, with oil prices climbing. Brent futures rose 2% to trade at $107.37 per barrel, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate futures gained 1.86% to $96.13. U.S. futures for all three major indexes slipped.
Asian markets, however, started the week mostly higher, with Japanese and Korean benchmark indexes hitting record highs in early trade, with focus on China’s industrial profits data for the first quarter of the year due later in the day.
In tech news, AI-fueled job losses raise employment worries as Meta and Microsoft last week announced more than 20,000 job cuts.
These are the same companies that are collectively spending hundreds of billions of dollars a year to build out artificial intelligence infrastructure.
Ironically, several top software executives have been poached by AI giants that are hunting for talent with sales and go-to-market experience, according to sources.
Executives from Salesforce, Snowflake, and Datadog have gone to OpenAI and Anthropic, multiple sources told CNBC.
— Lim Hui Jie
And finally…
South Korea’s ‘ant investors’ are marching to U.S. equities even as domestic market hits record highs
South Korean stocks have been surging to record highs over the past year, but that hasn’t dimmed the allure of U.S. equities for its residents.
The country made net purchases of $73.6 billion in U.S. stocks in 2025 — nearly five times more than it did in 2024.
The rush into U.S. stocks continues even as South Korea’s benchmark Kospi stock index delivered 75% returns last year, and has hit new highs this year.
— Lim Hui Jie, Blair Baek
