Good afternoon and welcome to Markets Desk, your midday read on the stories moving markets and policy.
Qualcomm is emerging as a serious contender in the AI infrastructure race after Bloomberg reported that ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, will deploy Qualcomm's custom AI processors at massive scale. That's a significant win for a chipmaker many have underestimated, and it signals that the inference era is opening doors well beyond the usual names dominating the conversation.
Shifting to macro policy, Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey offered a notably cautious tone on rate cuts, warning that even a Middle East ceasefire would still leave meaningful uncertainty hanging over the outlook. Bailey made clear that the Monetary Policy Committee needs to be, in his words, much more confident before easing — a signal to markets not to front-run the BoE on the rate path.
And on the policy and travel front, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin is weighing cuts to customs processing agents at international airports in so-called sanctuary cities. Industry watchers are flagging real concern here — reduced customs capacity at major hubs doesn't stay local, it cascades through connecting traffic and creates delays that ripple across the entire national air travel network.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
