Bet on the future, or focus on the present. Bear markets and fears of an economic slowdown have a way of lending urgency to the question for public companies.

Driving the news: Meta and Ford Motor Co., two completely different companies with two very different existential challenges to face, are taking divergent paths as they navigate a similar decision tree.

State of the situation: Ford announced Wednesday afternoon along with Volkswagen that it will shut down its long-term autonomous car project, Argo AI, saying it wants to focus on more partially autonomous technologies in the short term.

• Ford shares rose about 1.4% despite taking a $2.7bn writedown with the closure of Argo AI, which had been described as Ford’s answer to Tesla’s Autopilot…