Good morning. A few days ago, Unhedged wrote this about Big Tech earnings reports: “The market is being more pragmatic about the [artificial intelligence] gamble than it is getting credit for. Hype will not be enough. Investors want to see performance this week.” Please indulge us as we take a tiny victory lap. Meta’s third-quarter report included a warning of accelerating spending next year, and the market sent its shares down 8 per cent; Alphabet called for higher investments too, but combined this with much better than expected earnings, and its shares rose smartly. We’ll have more to say on tech earnings after Amazon and Apple report tomorrow. Meanwhile, email us: unhedged@ft.com.

The Fed

It all happened as expected: the Federal Reserve, yesterday, delivered a 25-basis point interest rate cut and said balance sheet reduction would come to an end this year. But what sent a mild, if noticeable, tremor through the markets was chair Jay Powell’s decision to emphasise, right from the start of his press conference, that an additional cut in December — which the market has been counting on — was “far from” assured, given “strongly differing” views on the committee. The point was emphasised by a pair of dissents to the committee’s decision — one calling for no cut, the other for a jumbo cut. Bond yields rose, and what had been an upbeat day for stocks stalled.