Good morning. Some nasty selling in tech yesterday, though just about all of it after hours. If the pattern holds after markets open today, things could get ugly. Email us: [email protected] and [email protected].

Bear market rally redux

Markets are feeling better all of a sudden. The S&P 500 is up 10 per cent from its lows of two weeks ago, and 5 per cent above where it closed last Thursday. One big reason appears to be this:

Federal Reserve officials are barrelling toward another interest-rate rise of 0.75 percentage point at their meeting Nov. 1-2 and are likely to debate then whether and how to signal plans to approve a smaller increase in December …

“The time is now to start planning for stepping down,” said San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly during a talk at the University of California, Berkeley on Friday.

That’s from an article the Wall Street Journal ran on Friday, which markets took as unofficial Fedspeak.