The Fed’s latest interest-rate cut wasn’t a surprise, but it still had lots of intrigue

The all-important dot plot — a chart compiling Fed officials’ year-end projections for interest rates — was also a bit spicy.

Big picture, the median projection showed two additional cuts before the end of the year, a slight uptick from June’s dot plot.

However, the breadth of projections was something, to say the least. Fed officials’ year-end policy rate forecasts ranged from raising rates a quarter point to dropping them by 125 basis points. Allie’s got a breakdown on all the wackiness in the Fed’s new dot plot.

“That’s a remarkably wide range of opinion about decisions that are not far in the future,” Bill Adams, chief economist for Comerica Bank, wrote in a note.

1. “Pharma bro” is betting against a beloved meme stock. Martin Shkreli, convicted securities fraudster turned stock trader, recently shared his short position on Opendoor. Shkreli’s stance doesn’t faze Eric Jackson — whose bullish Opendoor thesis caused the stock to soar — but it’s riling up some retail investors online.

2. Eleven stocks that are hot on the DL. Industrial stocks are on a tear, with the sector up 15% year-to-date. UBS shared 11 buy-rated names for investors to put on their radars, including Alaska Air Group and Quanta Services.

3. StubHub’s (not so) hot debut. The company finally debuted its widely anticipated IPO, only for its stock to drop 6%. The moment might’ve been overshadowed by the Federal Reserve’s long-awaited rate cut decision, but its failure to generate momentum could also be a sign of investors’ waning enthusiasm.

1. Mark Zuckerberg unveils Meta’s next wave of AI wearables. Zuckerberg has figured out a way to get a phone on your face — by shrinking it down and cramming it into a pair of glasses, BI’s Peter Kafka writes. Alongside them: a neural wristband that can detect muscle motions and a new VR upgrade for the Quest headset. Read the five biggest takeaways.

2. XAI told workers that layoffs were over. Then came more layoffs. In the midst of mass firings and a leadership exodus, new data annotation team leader Diego Pasini told workers in an all-hands meeting that xAI was giving them a 10% raise and increasing the team by 10 times its current size. Pasini also reassured employees that xAI wouldn’t make any further job cuts, but more than a hundred employees were let go a few hours later, multiple workers said.

3. The healthcare girlies are beefing. Sequoia-backed startup OpenEvidence and $13 billion Domixity are slinging lawsuits in the race to build “ChatGPT for doctors.” They’re locked in an intense legal battle that could set new precedents for trade secret disputes in the age of AI.

1. ABC suspends Jimmy Kimmel’s show “indefinitely.” ABC said it pulled Kimmel off the air over his comments about Charlie Kirk’s killing. Hollywood is reacting, including remarks from Ben Stiller, Wanda Sykes, and Jean Smart. President Donald Trump celebrated the move and urged NBC to cancel its late-night hosts. You can read what Kimmel said here.

2. Inside McDonald’s adventures in greenwashing. McDonald’s went from paper to plastic to paper again, spending millions on PR, recycling workarounds, and green pledges. Decades later, it has traded one single-use problem for another.

3. Ben & Jerry’s, minus Jerry. The ice cream brand’s cofounder, Jerry Greenfield, is leaving the company after 47 years. Greenfield criticized parent company Unilever on the way out, saying it had silenced Ben & Jerry’s activism on social and political issues.

Dan DeFrancesco, deputy executive editor and anchor, in New York. Hallam Bullock, senior editor, in London. Akin Oyedele, deputy editor, in New York. Grace Lett, editor, in New York. Amanda Yen, associate editor, in New York.

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