FTSE 100 in biggest drop since April as stock market sell-off continues – as it happened

4.51pm GMT Paschal Donohoe’s departure from Irish politics to become managing director of the World Bank will trigger another race for his second job as head of the Eurogroup ,an influential alliance of countries that use the euro. According to the Business Post’s Brussels correspondent Sarah Collins, Spanish economy minister Carlos Cuerpo almost got the numbers the last time around and could lead the field of contenders. Donohoe, was reappointed for a third term in July. His other challenger last summer, Lithuania’s Rimantas Šadžius, is no longer a minister. 4.47pm GMT Closing post: FTSE finishes day at near one-month low And finally, Britain’s stock market has recorded its biggest one-day fall since the early days of Donald Trump’s trade war. The blue-chip FTSE 100 share index has closed down 123 points, or 1.27%, at 9552 points, its lowest closing point since 22 October. That is the index’s biggest one-day drop since 7 April, shortly after Donald Trump announced his swathe of ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs. Engineering company Melrose (-3.9%), copper producer Antofagasta (-3.7%) and private equity firm 3i (-3.6%) led the fallers, on a day in which markets were hit by worries about AI valuations. Asia-Pacific stocks had earlier dipped to a one-month low today, amid signs that the enthusiasm that has driven stocks higher in recent months is fading, with shares, risky currencies and crypto assets all sliding. Fading hopes of a US interest rate cut in December, and anxiety over Nvidia’s results due on Wednesday, were also cited as factors. Here’s our news story about today’s market sell-off: Related: Crypto market sheds more than $1tn in six weeks amid fears of tech bubble Goodnight! GW Updated at 4.54pm GMT 4.25pm GMT Companies at the heart of this year’s AI boom are among the biggest fallers on Wall Street today. Chipmaker Nvidia are down 2.3%, Microsoft has lost 3.3%, and Google’s parent company Alphabet has lost 2.6%. 4.20pm GMT Google launches latest version of Gemini Google has just launched the latest version of Gemini, its AI model. It claims that Gemini 3 will bring in “a new era of intelligence”, saying: It’s state-of-the-art in reasoning, built to grasp depth and nuance — whether it’s perceiving the subtle clues in a creative idea, or peeling apart the overlapping layers of a difficult problem. Gemini 3 is also much better at figuring out the context and intent behind your request, so you get what you need with less prompting. It’s amazing to think that in just two years, AI has evolved from simply reading text and images to reading the room. On a day in which anxiety over AI valuations has been starkly apparent, Google is emphasizing that Gemini’s new capabilities will be immediately available in several profit-generating products like its search engine. CEO Sundar Pichai has described it as “our most intelligent model,” in a company blog post. 4.13pm GMT The US S&P 500 share index is on track for its longest slide since August, points out Bloomberg, with today’s losses setting it up four its fourth daily drop in a row. The S&P 500 index is now down around 1%. 4.10pm GMT There’s been no let-up in the selling across Europe today. As the session draws towards a close, the UK’s FTSE 100 share index is now down 153 points, or 1.6%, at 9,521 points. France’s CAC 40 index is down 2.2%, and Germany’s DAX has lost almost 2%. 2.57pm GMT Simon Harris, Ireland’s ebullient deputy prime minister, will be the country’s new finance minister in a major reshuffle that sees him drop his foreign affairs portfolio. Helen McEntee, the current education minister, will be the new foreign affairs minister, attending council meetings in Europe and dealing with US foreign and tariff policy. She is best known internationally as part of the team who helped negotiate Brexit under former taoiseach Leo Varadkar. The reshuffle was triggered by the surprise news on Tuesday that the long standing cabinet minister Paschal Donohoe was quitting to go to the World Bank in Washington as managing director (see earlier post). Finance is considered one of the top portfolios in any country along with foreign affairs and home affairs. But it has taken on huge importance this year in Dublin as the country came under relentless attack from Donald Trump which accused Ireland of “stealing” US pharma companies. 2.55pm GMT Bond markets could force Rachel Reeves ‘to do a secondary budget’, City investor warns There’s little more than a week to go until Rachel Reeves delivers her long-awaited budget. But if the fiscal update goes badly, could the chancellor be bounced into a second budget?! David Zahn, the head of European fixed income at Franklin Templeton, said the biggest risk from the budget on 26 November was that Reeves “disappoints”, leading to a sharp rise in bond yields – the interest rate on UK government debt. In that scenario “it forces her hand to do a secondary budget”, Zahn told reporters in London this morning, adding: “It depends how the bond market reacts. If the bond market reacts very badly … the government will have to react if bond yields start to go up too much.” More by, err, me here: Related: Bond markets could force Rachel Reeves ‘to do a secondary budget’, City investor warns Updated at 4.48pm GMT 2.45pm GMT Shares in Ocado have dived 14% - to the lowest level since 2013 – after Kroger, its major partner in the US, announced the closure of three warehouses using the UK company’s high tech equipment. Ocado signed a deal to build 20 automated warehouses for Kroger in 2018, eight of which are currently live with two more planned for next year. The deal was seen as a major part of Ocado’s plan to sell its online grocery delivery technology internationally. However, on Tuesday, Kroger said sites in Frederick in Maryland, Pleasant Prairie inWisconsin, and Groveland in Florida would close in January. Ocado said it expected to receive more than $250m in compensation for fees related to the early closure of the sites but its fee revenue this financial year would take a $50m hit. Kroger said on Tuesday that “a comprehensive review” of its set up had “identified opportunities to optimise its fulfillment network”. It said it would now mover towards a “hybrid fulfillment network” testing out “capital-light, store-based automation in high-volume geographies” while continuing to use automated warehouse processing of online orders where it sees “higher density of demand.” It noted that it had recently expanded its relationship with quick delivery service providers DoorDash and Instacart. The British company said in a statement: “Ocado continues to engage with Kroger on these and other matters, and expects significant growth in the US market, both with [warehousing] and store based automation.” 2.37pm GMT Dow Jones Industrial Average hits one-month low The opening bell on the New York stock market has rung, and another wave of selling has begun. The Dow Jones Industrial Average has dropped by 379 points, or 0.8%, in early trading to 46,211 points, and has hit a one-month low. Home Depot are the top faller, down 3.3%, followed by Amazon (-2.1%). Stocks continue to be hit by concerns that technology company valuations have surged too high, and pessimism that the US Federal Reserve might cut interest rates as soon as next month. 2.31pm GMT Bank of England chief economist Huw Pill has indicated that he isn’t close to changing his position and voting for a cut in interest rates. Speaking in London this morning, Pill argued that policymakers should not place too much weight on often-noisy short-run economic data, saying: “I think policymakers should be cautious about over-interpreting the latest news in data, because there is a lot of noise in the data flow, and partly because of some of the challenges our colleagues in the Office for National Statistics have faced.” Earlier this month, Pill was one of five policymakers who voted to leave interest rates on hold, outvoting four who wanted a cut. Today’s comments suggests he may not be persuaded to change his view by the recent increase in unemployment, and slowdown in wage growth. 2.17pm GMT Wall Street’s fear index has hit a one-month high today, Reuters reports, as investors have grown more jittery. The CBOE volatility index, known as the VIX, is currently up 1.2 points at 23.58 points. 2.07pm GMT We also have fresh evidence that US companies cut jobs last month. With official economic statistics slowly roaring back into life after the US government shutdown, economists are indebted to other sources, such as payroll operator ADP. According to ADP’s latest weekly data, US companies shed 2,500 jobs per week on average in the four weeks to 1 November. That suggests the pace of job cuts slowed at the end of the month – a week ago, ADP reported that US companies shed 11,250 jobs per week on average in the four weeks ending on 25 October. 1.46pm GMT BofA's European Fund Manager Survey: Getting more and more bullish Ironically, today’s sell-off comes at a time when optimism among European investors improving. Bank of America’s latest fund manager survey, released today, found that a net 77% of respondents expect stronger European growth over the coming twelve months, up from 57% last month. That’s the highest reading since mid-2021. BofA say: Growth optimism continues to build, especially in Europe, while the US labour market & an AI bubble is a concern but not more Record bullishness on European equities driven by hopes for earnings upgrades, though Europe’s relative appeal has slipped Banks remain the biggest sector overweight in Europe amid broadening confidence in cyclicals versus defensives outperformance 1.32pm GMT We’re still expecting Wall Street to open lower in about an hour, after chunky losses yesterday. The S&P 500 index, which lost 0.9% yesterday, is down another 0.5% in the futures market. Fawad Razaqzada, market analyst at FOREX.com, says: US index futures came off their worse levels at the European open, before resuming lower a few hours later along with European markets as the bounce didn’t have much firepower. Markets have been under intense pressure in recent days across the world, with the risk off sentiment also hurting cryptocurrencies, copper and commodity dollars. Even gold has been forced lower despite being a haven asset. 1.22pm GMT Cloudflare outage takes websites offline A key piece of the internet’s usually hidden infrastructure suffered a global outage today, causing error messages to flash up across websites. Cloudflare, a US company whose services include defending millions of websites against malicious attacks, suffered an unidentified problem on Tuesday, which meant internet users could not access some customers’ websites. Neither could some site owners access their performance dashboards. Sites including X and Open AI suffered increased outages at the same time as Cloudflare’s problems, according to Downdetector. The outage is ongoing but as of 12.21pm GMT, the company said: “We are seeing services recover, but customers may continue to observe higher-than-normal error rates as we continue remediation efforts.” Related: Cloudflare outage causes error messages across the internet Updated at 1.57pm GMT 12.11pm GMT FTSE 100 index near one-month low Britain’s blue-chip share index has fallen further through the morning, to its lowest level in almost a month. The FTSE 100 index is now down 132 points, or 1.35%, at 9543 points. That’s its lowest level since 23 October. Kathleen Brooks, research director at XTB, says: There are multiple drivers of markets right now, including fears about AI tech stock valuations, concerns about a weakening US economic outlook, and concerns that the Fed won’t cut interest rates fast enough. Even traditional safe havens are faltering this morning; gold is lower by $23 per ounce and is just about clinging on to the $4,000 level. Luxury stocks, which used to be considered ‘recession proof’, are leading European indices lower. Hermes and LVMH are some of the worst performers on the Eurostoxx so far on Tuesday and are falling alongside tech stocks such as Dutch giant ASML. In FX, the yen and the Swiss Franc are performing like their safe haven status would suggest, and they are leading the G10 FX pack so far this morning. 11.50am GMT JPMorgan’s Pinto Warns of Possible ‘Correction’ in AI Valuations Valuations in the booming AI industry are due for a reassessment, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co. Vice Chairman Daniel Pinto. Speaking at the Bloomberg Africa Business Summit in Johannesburg today, Pinto also warned that any decline would reverberate across the stock market. Pinto warned: “There is probably a correction there. That correction will also create a correction in the rest of the segment, the S&P and in the industry.” Concern has been growing in recent weeks that the valuations of the world’s largest technology companies could have risen too high, based on an overly optimistic view of how quickly AI would delivery productivity benefits. As Pinto explains: “In order to justify these valuations, you are considering a level of productivity that, it will happen, but it may not happen as fast as the market is pricing now.” More here. 10.58am GMT Ireland's finance minister steps down to join World Bank Ireland’s long-standing finance minister Paschal Donohoe is to step down to join the World Bank as its managing director. Donohoe, who has been in finance or public expenditure departments for the past 10 years, will also step down from his job as head of the Eurogroup, the alliance of member states who use the euro currency. The Irish cabinet was given the surprise news on Tuesday and was told that the appointment of Donohoe to the board of the World Bank had been approved on Monday night. Donohoe has been a stalwart of Irish politics during Brexit years, covid and beyond and his steady hand made him seem as a potential front runner for taoiseach. But he lost out on a key opportunity last March 2024 when the leadership of his Fine Gael came up with Simon Harris quickly amassing enough support within the party to take over following the resignation of the former Taoiseach Leo Varadkar. He has been tipped for international jobs ever since, including the head of the International Monetary Fund, however he has always professed loyalty to his position in the Irish cabinet or missed out to other candidates. His resignation could trigger a cabinet reshuffle but it will also prompt what is likely a hard by-election in Dublin central, a constituency shared in the multi seat system by Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald, and in which Gary Hutch – who had links with the Hutch criminal gang – also ran in last November’s general election. Donohoe’s departure is a significant blow to the Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil partnership and to the EU as one of the longest serving ministers attending EU summits. He played a significant role in protecting Ireland’s economic strategy in relation to foreign investment and corporate tax when under serious international attacks from the likes of France and a court case, which Ireland ultimately won, over the Apple’s corporate tax. Updated at 11.15am GMT 10.26am GMT Julia Pyke, joint managing director of the nuclear power project Sizewell C, said: Cornwall Insight’s analysis shows exactly why Britain needs more nuclear, not less. A stable, low-carbon baseload from projects such as Sizewell C avoids the expensive system charges that households are now paying for and protects the UK from volatile markets from overseas. She said the RAB (regulated asset base) contribution, a new charge on UK electricity bills to help fund new nuclear power stations, is little more than £10 a year, but it unlocks at least 60 years of clean, reliable, homegrown power that can stabilise bills for generations and creates tens of thousands of British jobs and opportunities which completely transforms communities. 10.02am GMT Cornwall Insight: Energy price cap to dip by 1% to £1,733 annual bill from January The forecaster Cornwall Insight has issued new forecasts for the January energy price cap. The energy regulator Ofgem’s price cap is expected to dip by 1%, taking it down by £22 to an average bill of £1,733 a year for a typical household from January. But analysts at the specialist consultancy said they expect the price cap to tick higher again from April. Jess Ralston, energy analyst at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, said: As temperatures drop, many will be worried about how they are going to pay their energy bills. Rumoured cuts to home insulation schemes at the budget next week could leave the most vulnerable households facing higher bills for years to come and exposed to the kind of price spikes we’ve seen over the past few years.Low levels of investment into infrastructure like schools has been mirrored in our electricity system and that is now catching up with us. But an upgraded power grid will enable the UK to use more of its own renewable power, making it less reliant on foreign gas imports and less at the mercy of the kinds of foreign price swings that saw household bills soar. Updated at 10.03am GMT 9.36am GMT Crest Nicholson warns on profits amid 'subdued' summer sales and budget uncertainty The housebuilder Crest Nicholson has put out a profit warning after “subdued” sales over the summer, and also blamed uncertainty around the government’s tax policy ahead of the 26 November budget. The shares tumbled 13% on the news. The company is closing one divisional office and will cut 50 jobs, including staff at the site and some “selective other roles” across overhead functions. Crest said its adjusted profit before tax for the year to 31 October would be at the low end, or slightly below, its range of £28m to £38m, reflecting a housing market that has remained subdued through the summer, and the continued uncertainty surrounding government tax policy ahead of the forthcoming budget. It cautioned that near-term market conditions were likely to remain challenging. The company expects to complete 1,691 homes this year, at the lower end of its range of between 1,700 and 1,900 homes, including 35% affordable units. Its sales rate was 0.51, compared with 0.48 in 2024, although it dropped to 0.45 in the last 13 weeks of its financial year. It has sold five land parcels from larger sites as it trims its landbank, and is working on a new house type range. Rival builder Taylor Wimpey has also reported a drop in sales in the key autumn period. Updated at 9.52am GMT 9.17am GMT Eight firms under investigation in crackdown on additional online fees Britain’s competition watchdog has begun investigations into eight companies about their online pricing practices, expressing concern over additional fees and sales tactics such as “drip pricing” and “pressure selling”. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said it was looking into the ticket sellers StubHub and Viagogo; AA Driving School and BSM Driving School; the US gym chain Gold’s Gym; and the retailers Wayfair, Appliances Direct and Marks Electrical. The investigations are the first launched by the CMA using its new consumer protection powers. The watchdog said it had concerns over practices including drip pricing – when consumers are shown an initial price and then face additional fees in the checkout process – and the use of misleading countdown timers, which are banned under the new regime. The investigations follow a cross-economy review by the CMA since April of more than 400 businesses in 19 sectors to assess their compliance with price transparency rules. The watchdog has also written advisory letters to 100 businesses across 14 sectors outlining concerns about their use of additional fees and sales tactics. It is publishing new guidance for businesses to help them comply with the law. The regulator’s new powers enable it to decide whether consumer laws have been broken, rather than having to go through the courts. If the CMA finds there has been an infringement of the law, it can order businesses to pay compensation to affected customers, and can fine companies up to 10% of global turnover. Related: Eight firms under investigation in crackdown on additional online fees 8.53am GMT European shares slide as volatility surges Europe’s major share indices are down by more than 1%, as the sell-off spreads across global markets. The UK’s FTSE 100 index fell by 0.9%. Germany’s Dax is down 1.3%, France’s CAC and Italy’s FTSE Mib both lost 1.5%, and Spain’s Ibex dropped 1.6%. A gauge of eurozone volatility – the equivalent of Wall Street’s “fear gauge” VIX – surged to its highest level since the US regional bank sell-off in mid-October. Deutsche Bank analysts led by Jim Reid said: It’s been a challenging start to the week as markets brace for two key events: Nvidia’s earnings tomorrow night and the US payrolls report on Thursday. For now, equities remain under pressure, with the S&P 500 (-0.92%) posting a third consecutive loss [on Monday] for the first time since September and marking its worst three-day run since April (-2.61%) with futures down another half a percent as I type this morning. Concerns swirling around the AI trade pushed Nvidia (-1.88%) to another decline. In addition to the AI concerns, the risk-off tone was reinforced by the latest signals from the Fed, as investors continued to price out the likelihood of a December rate cut. Futures now imply just a 41% probability, down from 43% on Friday – with the highest rate priced for the December contract since late August. Updated at 9.13am GMT 8.11am GMT Klarna boss reveals he's nervous about AI spending splurge The boss of buy-now-pay-later group Klarna has also warned about the tech industry’s multibillion-dollar dash to build data centres to power AI models. Sebastian Siemiatkowski told the Financial Times that the huge sums being poured into computing infrastructure made him “nervous”. He said: “I think [OpenAI] can be very successful as a company but at the same time I’m very nervous about the size of these investments in these data centres. That’s the particular thing that I am concerned about.” 8.07am GMT FTSE 100 falls 1% Britain’s stock market has opened in the red, as the sell-off in global markets reaches Europe. The blue-chip FTSE 100 share index has dropped by 101 points, or just over 1%, to 9,675 points, further away from the record high of 9,930 points set last week. Mining stocks are among the big fallers, with Fresnillo down 6.4% and Endeavour Mining losing 4.7%. The FTSE 250 index of medium-sized companies is also sliding, down 1.15%. 8.02am GMT Britain to outlaw tickets touts, minister says Britain is set to ban the resale of tickets to live events like music concerts and shows at inflated prices, UK housing minister Steve Reed has declared. Reed told BBC News that said the practice of “ticket touting” - people buying tickets to sell them on at multiples of their face value - was hugely damaging for individuals who had to pay “through the nose” to attend. Reed insisted: “We are committed to ending the scandal of ticket touts.” Reed was speaking a day after news broke that reselling a ticket at anything more than the price at which it was originally bought will be banned. As my colleague Rob Davies reported: Reselling tickets for profit is to be outlawed under plans due to be announced this week, the Guardian has learned, as the government goes ahead with a long-awaited crackdown on touts and resale platforms such as Viagogo and StubHub. Ministers had been considering allowing touts – and ordinary consumers – to sell on a ticket for up to 30% above the original face value, as part of a consultation process that ended earlier this year. Related: Reselling tickets for profit to be outlawed in UK government crackdown 7.59am GMT 2025 was suposed to be a big year for Bitcoin, with a pro-crypto president in the White House. But it hasn’t quite worked out that way, as Victoria Scholar, head of investment at interactive investor, explains: “Bitcoin is extending losses, trading around $90k, shedding around 2% fuelled by concerns about overvaluations in the tech sector and broader risk-off sentiment that is causing a ripple effect across global markets. Bitcoin has turned negative for 2025, after peaking on 6th October at an all-time high above $126k and has subsequently shed about 28.5%. Earlier it briefly broke below $90k for the first time in seven months. This year was meant to be the year of the bitcoin bulls supported by a highly crypto friendly administration in the White House and Trump’s ‘less is more’ approach towards regulation. However, fears of an AI bubble and concerns about the market’s heavy dependence on a handful of tech giants have caused investors to dial back their exposure to speculative assets such as bitcoin. There’s a general sense of nervousness that has captured the market mood lately and bitcoin appears to be in the firing line. Plus with hints that the Fed might not cut rates next month, riskier non-yielding assets like bitcoin look less attractive in a higher interest rate environment.” 7.52am GMT Monday’s selloff in US stocks has set off some alarm bells for technical traders. Both the S&P 500 share index and the tech-focused Nasdaq Composite closed below their 50-day moving averages, according to Dow Jones Market Data. Marketwatch says this is a “worrysome” development, explaining: The S&P 500 had consistently closed above its 50-day moving average from May 1 through last Friday — marking 138 consecutive trading days. But on Monday, the index snapped its longest stretch above this average since the 149-trading-day period that ended on Feb. 26, 2007. 7.43am GMT Crypto market has lost $1.2tn as traders shun speculative assets More than $1tn has been wiped from the cryptocurrency market in the past six weeks. According to data from CoinGecko, the global cryptocurrency market cap today is $3.15trn, down from $4,379trn on 7 October. The Financial Times blames concerns about lofty tech valuations and the path of US interest rates for this sell-off in speculative assets, adding: The total market value of more than 18,000 coins tracked by data provider CoinGecko has tumbled 25 per cent since a market peak on October 6, wiping about $1.2tn from their combined capitalisation. 7.32am GMT Bitcoin hits lowest since April Bitcoin has fallen to its lowest level since April, as the cryptocurrency sector is hit by a sharp selloff. The world’s largest crypto coin dropped as low as $89,286 this morning, a seven-month low, meaning it has lost all its gains in 2025. Bitcoin has now fallen by almost a third since hitting a record high at the start of last month. Such volatility isn’t that unusual, though, as Tony Sycamore, analyst at IG, explains: Bitcoin, the canary in the risk coalmine, slips below $90k for the first time in seven months as its decline starts to display more impulsive rather than corrective characteristics. That said, it is notable that its ~29% pullback from the record $126,272 high of early October is now on par with the ~31.5% pullback witnessed at the $74,434 Liberation Day low, coming from the January $109,356 high. 7.26am GMT Google boss warns 'no company is going to be immune' if AI bubble bursts The head of Google’s parent company has warned that every company would be affected if the AI boom were to unravel. Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Alphabet, has told the BBC that the growth of artificial intelligence (AI) investment had been an “extraordinary moment”, but cautioned that there was some “irrationality” in the current AI boom. Pichai argued that the excitement around AI is very rational, given its potential. But he also cautioned that there are moments when the tech industry “overshoots”, citing the excess investment we saw in the early days of the web. Asked whether Google would be immune to the impact of the AI bubble bursting, Pichai said the tech giant could weather that potential storm, but added: “I think no company is going to be immune, including us.” More here. 7.26am GMT Introduction: Market selloff continues Good morning, and welcome to our rolling coverage of business, the financial markets and the world economy. Global markets are racking up their fourth day of losses in a row, as concerns over technology valuations are worrying investors. Asia-Pacific stocks have dipped to a one-month low today, amid signs that the enthusiasm that has driven stocks higher in recent months is fading, with shares, risky currencies and crypto assets all sliding MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan has lost 1.8%, slipping to its lowest level since mid-October. South Korea’s KOSPI has lost 3.5%, and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng is down 1.9%. Japan’s Nikkei 225 is also having a very rough day, down over 3%, on concerns over an escalating dispute with China over Taiwan Related: China and Japan are in a war of words over Taiwan – what happens next? Last night, the US stock market fell, with the S&P 500 share index closing at its lowest level in a month. European stock markets are heading for losses when trading begins at 8am GMT too. Various reasons are being cited for the mood change. Investors are fretting that US interest rates may not be cut as quickly as hoped, following hawkish commentary from some policymakers. Jitters are building ahead of AI behemoth Nvidia’s results on Wednesday night. The huge sums of money being committed by AI companies to fund their infrastructure is also raising eyebrows, especially as it is being increasingly funded by debt. Last night, Amazon raised $15bn in its first US dollar bond offering in three years, adding to a spree of jumbo debt sales by technology firms as they race to fund artificial-intelligence infrastructure. Michael Brown, senior research strategist at brokerage Pepperstone, explains: Those Nvidia earnings, incidentally, once again stand as a major macro risk, as enthusiasm around the whole AI frenzy seems to ebb, with the market having shifted from an ‘all capex is good capex’ mood, to one where whether firms are actually able to monetise that expenditure has become the million (or more!) dollar question. On that note, Amazon kicking-off a six-part bond sale didn’t help matters much yesterday, following hot on the heels of similar sales from Meta and Alphabet in recent weeks, and further fuelling concern that AI expansion is now being fuelled by debt, and not by free cash flow, in turn exacerbating jitters over the sustainability of all the spending that we currently see. The agenda 10am GMT: Treasury Committee hearing on risks and rewards of embracing crypto 1pm GMT: Huw Pill, Bank of England’s chief economist, to give speech at Skinners Hall, London 3pm GMT: US factory orders and durable goods data for August (delayed by lockdown)