| Apple suffers a $120 billion stock wipeout. Mark Zuckerberg outlines job cuts at Meta. Toyota says it'll keep making gas-guzzlers. Here's what you need to know today. Federal Reserve officials reiterated that they will keep raising interest rates to restrain high inflation, as turmoil in Europe continued to fray investor nerves. It may have taken six months, but the Fed's message is getting received loud and clear in the stock market where everyone from retail traders to smart-money speculators is pulling up stakes. The S&P500 fell as much as 2.9% overnight, while the Nasdaq 100 was dragged even lower by Apple, which took a 6.1% hit — equivalent to a $120 billion wipeout — after a rare analyst downgrade from Bank of America. The pain looks set to continue in Asia. Britain is in a self-inflicted financial crisis that threatens to accelerate the economy's dive into recession. In the week since the government unveiled the biggest tax cuts since 1972 with scant detail of how they will be financed, the pound has crashed to its lowest-ever level against the dollar, the cost of insuring British government debt against the risk of default has soared, and the Bank of England has been forced to intervene amid concerns about the nation's pension funds. What happens next will determine just how deep the looming recession proves. Central to that question is whether Liz Truss's new administration can restore its credibility with investors. Our Big Take looks at how the UK's crisis of confidence was years in the making … and what comes next.  | Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg outlined sweeping plans to reduce headcount for the first time ever, calling an end to an era of rapid growth at the social media giant. In what would be the first major budget cut since the founding of Facebook in 2004, Zuckerberg said the company will freeze hiring and reduce budgets across most teams. Shares have fallen 60% so far this year. The cuts are Meta's starkest admission yet that advertising revenue growth is slowing amid mounting competition for users' attention. And they're not alone. Twitter enacted a hiring freeze in May, Google said it would slow hiring during the back half of the year, and Snap cut 20% of its workforce in August. The world's biggest carmaker plans to keep gas-powered vehicles as a key part of its lineup, rejecting efforts by rivals to go fully electric. Toyota says it's concerned about how quickly consumers will embrace new technologies. CEO Akio Toyoda said while the company would introduce more electric vehicles in the coming years, it will offer a range of other options, including gas-electric hybrids, hydrogen, and traditional fossil fuel models. The decision contrasts with that of competitors such as General Motors, which has pledged to go all electric by 2035. Some, however, remain skeptical of that particular carmaker's pledge. One of Apple's most senior executives is leaving the company after he turned up in a viral video on TikTok making a crude joke. In the video Tony Blevins was approached by content creator Daniel Mac while he parked a Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren, as part of a series where Mac asks owners of expensive cars their occupations. Instead of truthfully declaring that he was Apple's vice president of procurement, in charge of striking deals with suppliers and partners, Blevins told Mac: "I have rich cars, play golf and fondle big-breasted women, but I take weekends and major holidays off." Get the full story here. Equities are still looking complacent relative to bonds and currencies, which signals there could be plenty more pain to come for all assets. Central bank interest-rate hikes famously take as much as six months to work their way through economies. There have been so many large shifts in such a short span of time that it can be easy to lose sight of the potential that the real-world impact of rapid policy tightening has barely begun. A key measure of just how much worse things can get for stocks is the way that the VIX fear gauge is much lower now on a relative basis than bond volatility. With Fed officials continuing to beat the drum for aggressive rate hikes, the potential is growing for equities volatility to soar to the sort of highs we are already seeing for Treasuries. Garfield Reynolds is Chief Rates Correspondent for Bloomberg News in Asia, based in Sydney. | 
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