Happy Monday, Munchers! 🙏

Hope you had a fun weekend. Lots of rest, lots of relaxation, and lots of time-pass. It is getting nice and chilly here in Mumbai, so we're all sitting back with a warm cup of coffee. 

As always, here is your daily dose of the news that matters, from Wall Street to Dalal Street - in 5 minutes and 25 seconds.

Over the weekend, Amazon headbutted into India's tech, Adidas saw their Yeezy stash go bad, and America sent bullets flying. 🔥

Let’s dive in.

What’s hot, what’s not?

Market Commentary

• Earnings season is getting super duper busy, and profits seem strong. Investors are taking this and reassessing the path to sky-high interest rates and wondering whether we need to hike that much.

• The Yen strengthened a fair bit after some reports that we might have a new Bank of Japan governor. Oh. 💀

• Housing demand also increased for the first time in a whole year with pending home sales climbing slightly. The "smart money" thinks that it's a short-lived bounce... but we've seen first-hand how smart it is.

Story Roundup

1 - Amazon presses play on India. 🎶

Amazon has deployed over $7 billion in India in the last decade, and they're getting ready to throw down more cash. 

Bezos and co. want to buy MXPlayer - a little known app that is massive in India. They have a staggering 300 million users and offer live cable TV to consumers for free.

They also run very smoothly on low-cost Android phones - which makes it even better for the Asian market, where 95% of the population doesn't have the luxury of an iPhone a year.

MXPlayer monetizes like every other big tech firm does - ads. 

They were actually bought over in 2018 for a stunning $140 million - a mammoth number at the time. 

Turns out 1.4 billion people get bored pretty quickly, and Amazon wants to catch that Indian attention. 🎥

2 - A big pile of shoes could run Adidas dry. 👟

Too much of a good thing is a bad thing. 

Don't believe me? Ask the CEO of Adidas. 

Ever since they cut their partnership with Kanye West, they lost 10% of their revenue overnight and are set for even more supply issues.

Adidas is currently sitting on a pile of unsold Yeezys worth $1.3 billion. 

If they don't get this stuff off the shelves, it will lead to a hefty revenue loss but an even bigger surge in operating costs - marked at ~$700 million.

Here's a statement from them admitting that the numbers aren't looking great.

All I'm saying is that I'd be happy to take a few pairs off their hands... 🤷

3 - America sends bullets spraying into the skies. 💣

Remember that "Chinese balloon" that was floating around the US? 

Turns out it has a family.

The US shot down more flying objects - this time over Canada. 

Four balloons were downed, two around Canada and two over the US. 

There is still tons to find out about these mystery objects since they have been in operation for years - and American intelligence didn't know about them until two weeks back.

It's a crew of balloons... and it's probably been all around the world. 

Make sure you shut your curtains. 🙈

4 - Investors bet on rates going higher for longer. 📈

They say that everything is priced in - so here's a snapshot of how the future of interest rates looks. 

The futures markets are saying that rates will peak slightly above 5% by July, with one rate cut by year-end. 

That is the very definition of higher for longer, partly caused by a blockbuster employment report which told us that the labour markets are still super duper strong. 

Inflation coming down quickly would be a welcome sight for all of us, but the Fed wants to be careful with this one. 

They're willing to do what it takes, and they'll keep their foot on the pedal until we're back at 2%.

JPow sets the scene in our world. 🤩

5 - Turkey pays a big price for the rest of the world. 🦃

The ground is shaking beneath Turkey, and it looks like some shoddy developers could be caught in the crossfire. 

About 35k deaths have been confirmed with hundreds of thousands of injuries, and tons are still unaccounted for. 

The economic losses from these quakes could reach $84 billion and could unleash hellfire on Turkey's already-teetering economy.

About 130 developers have also been arrested and tons of people from the government have been detained. 

Building standards were never really enforced or checked on, which is why we've seen 20-story structures evaporate in an instant. 

Super sad to see. 😔

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