Happy weekend, Munchers! 🙏

Hope your Friday partying was awesome. Have a lovely, relaxing weekend.

As always, here is your daily dose of the news that matters, from Wall Street to Dalal Street - in 4 minutes and 51 seconds.

Yesterday, regulators slapped Microsoft with a meaty lawsuit, Indian investing attitudes shift to passive, and COVID tightens it's grasp on Britain's healthcare systems.

Let’s dive in.

What's hot, what's not?

Market Commentary

• Stock markets remain in choppy waters as all eyes are trained on the upcoming Fed decision. Only time will tell where rates go, and in which market hell breaks loose.

• Traders and households alike are thinking that inflation is gonna start climbing back down. Sentiment is looking good!

• Year end is wrapping up and people are also focusing on the smart money's predictions to reshuffle and reallocated their assets for the next year. People have had enough of 2022.

Story Roundup

1 - Microsoft's $75bn Activision acquisition may meet Armageddon. 📃

Regulators will try their very hardest to keep the Big Tech empire from expanding it's sphere of dominance.

The Federal Trade Commission in the US just sued Microsoft over their $75 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, and it's a landmark case.

FTC thinks that Microsoft might make Activision produced games available exclusively to Xbox, hurting every other console maker.

This one's gonna be a tough nut to crack. 🥜

2 - COVID grips England as winter looms. 🥶

Winter has arrived, and the future is looking questionable at best in Britain.

COVID infections in England rose for a second week, with Northern Irish infections rising for the first time in a month.

The picture painted is very mixed, since a lot of data is either missing or unreliable.

As the world reopens and things get chillier, COVID is gonna have a great time.

Mask up, folks. 😷

3 - Indian investors go passive. 😴

India's markets are going nuts.

Last month, the number of retail investors with a SIP hit the highest level on record.

This means a few things - - domestic Indian investors are maturing to their own markets- money is still trickling into companies despite everything that's going on- people want to close their eyes and put their portfolio on autopilot.

Net inflows into mutual funds, however, are lower. This makes absolute sense given how much the last 6 months have spooked people, but things are still recovering.

Whole lotta wealth yet to be created. 🚀

4 - Grocery startups see no glory yet. 🛒

Turkish grocery delivery app Getir just scooped up it's German rival Gorrilas.

These two companies have been some of Europe's biggest black holes for VC money, so Getir is probably buying things that are held together with spit and string.

A deal like this also represents a down round for both the companies, which is when startups raise new money at a valuation below their previous one.

No more VC lollipops to be handed out. 🍭

5 - Santander gets slapped with a hefty fine. 💸

"Only when the tide goes out do you see who's been swimming naked."

And the shocking skinny dipper seems to be Santander Bank.

They've been hit with a hefty $120 million fine because of some poor anti-money laundering practices, failure to manage client money, and improper verification.

Santander chose not to fight the case, and just settle. That's gonna give them a 30% discount on the final bill, along with a very stern telling-off.

Greed. 👑

A few nibbles from Pasiv 🍪

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PS - Investing involves risk. Conduct your own research before you invest. Pasiv Financial Ltd is regulated by the DFSA.

Hope you enjoyed this issue of the Market Munch. If you've got any feedback - good or bad (😏) you can hit reply to this email. Thanks a ton for reading!

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Cheers, and have a lovely day. 🙏

Aryaansh