Market Munch 🍪 | 1 August 2022
The West gives Russia some breathing room, Big Tech gets an Indonesian slap on the face, and Jack Ma gives up control of Ant.
Happy Monday, Munchers!
Here is your daily dose of the news that matters, from Wall Street to Dalal Street - in 4 minutes and 1 second.
Let’s dive in.
Monday Markets Recap
US GDP shrunk by 0.9% last week, signaling a technical recession. 📉
Relentless Eurozone and US inflation figures force central banks to keep up. 💵
Fed hiked it’s benchmark interest rate by 75bps. 💀
Big Tech and Big Oil had a stellar earnings season (except Meta). The former more-or-less met expectations and the latter broke historical profit records. 💸
Stocks across the board had one of their best months since the 2020 recovery. 💚
What’s hot, what’s not
Story Roundup
1 - The West backs off from angering Russia 🤚🛑
European governments look like they’re easing on diplomatic sanctions to reduce Russia’s oil revenues.
The EU announced a worldwide ban on providing maritime insurance to Russian vessels last month.
Last week however, they started rolling this curb back - citing fears of rising crude prices and energy inflation.
The EU initially wanted UK co-ordination on the ban, but they were concerned that a ban on maritime insurance would send energy prices soaring by forcing millions of barrels of crude off the market.
Tricky spot.
2 - Indonesia gives Big Tech the boot.🥾
Indonesia kicked Big Tech out for not complying with their new laws - which some people have called “invasive of human rights”.
Steam, Epic Games, PayPal, Yahoo and a few others failed to meet the country’s deadline to get a new license - which enables them to -
obtain data about specific users
coerce companies into removing content
censor content that they think is harmful
Big Brother always wins. 🤷
3 - Jack Ma’s resignation delays Ant Group’s blockbuster IPO 📈
Jack Ma is planning to step away from control of Ant Group - a move which delays their public offering - which was market at about $220bn at the end of 2020.
This comes after China’s government sent their IPO plans in smoke about 2 years back - demanding that the company restructure their operations.
Since then, Jack Ma has retreated away from the limelight, as Ant was forced to sell stakes in some of their biggest-performing businesses as part of a ‘rectification’ process.
China always wins. 🤫
Aaaand that’s a wrap.
Happy weekend guys.
Thanks a ton for reading. Hope you enjoyed it. Any feedback is open - positive or negative. Hit my line at aryaansh.rathore@gmail.com or https://www.linkedin.com/in/aryaansh/.