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Good morning from the newsroom of the Financial Times.

Today is Tuesday, February 5th, and this is your FT news briefing.

Today, investors worry about alphabet's spending spree.

Prime Minister Theresa May heads to Belfast to find a solution for the Irish

backstop, and a new study finds that venture capitalists lose out on money when they ignore

women. Then the FT's U.S. markets editor Robin Wigglesworth

takes us through investing legend Bill Gross's career.

After news that Gross is stepping off the global investment stage.

I'm Eric Krucky, and here's the news you need to start your

day.

Google Parent Company, Alphabet, reported fourth quarter earnings on Monday. And though it beat Wall Street's revenue expectations,

Alphabet ended last year with unprecedented spending on investments,

which dented the company's profit margins.

Shares in Alphabet fell almost 3% after hours as investors digested the news.

In 2018, Alphabet put a total of $25.1 billion into capital spending. That's almost double the

13.2 billion dollars spent the year before. The biggest rise in

spending came from licensing original content for YouTube and expanding the

company's cloud computing division.

It comes as rivals Amazon and Facebook have also reported higher spending.

Wall Street's unease about the binge was tempered by a stronger than expected performance from Google's advertising

...