Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Friday, September 4th, and this is your F.T. news briefing.

A tech sell-off on Thursday led US markets to their biggest drop since June.

Apple is making a formal commitment to freedom of speech,

and we'll take a look at why the US military's next weapons

might be in space.

I'm Mark Filipino, and here's the news you need to start your day. The S&P 500 dropped 3.5% yesterday.

The tech heavy NASDAQ composite was down 5%.

So what happened to the tech stocks that carried US equities to record highs

this summer? The F.T.'s Richard Henderson explains.

So we're basically seeing the winds come out of the powerful rally in tech stocks and it doesn't mean

necessarily that we're going to see a big drop in the likes of Apple or even Tesla.

I think it's more of a taking a pause in this

rally, allowing the market rally to broaden a little bit and for investors to

really rethink the valuation of some of these companies.

Apple is down 8%, it's wiped 150 billion from the value of the company.

It's a massive amount.

It's roughly equivalent to the market value of the company. It's a massive amount. It's roughly equivalent to the market value of McDonald's, to give you a sense of the size.

But I think this is the market rethinking this big rally and just taking stock of it and I think the powerful

intervention of the feds and all the characteristics of the market that have

propelled tech stocks so strongly will come back into play so I don't think we're

going to see a massive drop in tech. It's still very powerful as a sector.

So Rich, what signs are investors looking for now?

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