Happy Monday, Munchers! 🙏

As always, here is your daily dose of the news that matters, from Wall Street to Dalal Street - in 4 minutes and 53 seconds.

Over the weekend, Adani baba splashed 2 bil on some debt repayments, SVB got ditched by the Feds, and Tim Cook went for wearables. 🔥

Let’s dive in.

What’s hot, what’s not?

Market Commentary

• Bank stocks around the world got beaten and bruised multiple times over as Wall Street hotshots suffer the fallout of SVB’s explosion.

• US jobs data came in and it was softer than expected - which means that the fear of some sharp policy tightening is gonna be fading.

• Overall, a pretty chill weekend. Unless you work in tech. In that case, I’m praying for you. 😂

Story Roundup

1 - America’s got SVB’s back. 👀

I’m sure you’re as sick of hearing about SVB as I am.

But this one’s actually important.

The US Fed announced an “emergency lending facility” to give money back to ALL of SVB’s clients.

All depositors get access to their cash by Monday morning, and life goes back to normal.

Tons of VCs said that the reason SVB went belly-up was because they were the most exposed lender of them all.

They had a -
- concentrated customer base (a small number of people hold LOTS of money)
- lots of tech companies as clients (very reliant on “the business cycle”)
- high proportion of uninsured deposits (over 90%)
- significant exposure to cryptos (do I need to say anything)

We live in a simulation. 💀

2 - Tim Cook bets big on a headset. 🤔

Apple’s latest shiny gadget might be a next-gen hardware product strong enough to rival the iPhone.

Or at least, that’s what some of the folks at Apple think.

Tim Cook is set to release a “mixed-reality” headset later this year.

It’s spent about 7 years in development. That’s more than twice as long as the iPhone. So it better be good.

The stakes are pretty high for Tim Cook, since this product is gonna be the first one to be conceived from scratch under his leadership.

We’re gonna have access to both virtual and augmented reality.

Welcome to the matrix, and get your kidneys ready. 🙏🏻

3 - Adani pre-pays a massive pile of debt. 📉

Nothing says "all is well" like paying off debt that you don't even need to.

Adani baba is waving the chequebook around, and he's just posted funds to repay a $2.6 billion loan.

The crazy thing? This debt wasn’t even due until later this year.

He’s trying to give markets a message. If loan pre-payments could speak, this one would be saying - "here, I have over $2.5 billion in cash just lying around to give back to you".

Adani is not-so-desperate, but there are still a lot of questions that hang over his head.

First of all, there's the case of the hundreds of share manipulation allegations that are being thrown around.

Then, there's the story of the thousands of Adani-owned corporate entities that do nothing but pump the stock.

There's something sinister going on... but that's for another day.

On we march. 💀

4 - Saudi’s new airline takes off. ✈️

When Saudi does something, they do it big.

And they’re taking to the skies with this one.

Prince MBS announced a new airline called Riyadh Air.

It’s gonna be adding $20 billion to Saudi’s GDP and will create over 200k jobs.

Riyadh Air will also be fully owned by Saudi’s PIF (a $650bn behemoth).

The interesting takeaway is that big bucks are back to chasing travel, which means that the COVID-induced investor paranoia is gone.

But the battle won’t be easy.

Middle East’s airlines are some of the world’s best. Riyadh Air will need to run like clockwork and offer exceptional service to their flyers.

Saudi wants to get a big slice of the aviation pie, and they’re serious about it.

5 - EV companies electrify Mexican mines. ⚡

The real winner of the EV gold rush is Mexico.

Billions of dollars from motor giants have found their way into the land of tacos - and their economy is gonna get a fair bit of supercharging.

Both Tesla and BMW bought one-way tickets to Mexico and put up large manufacturing plants.

Tesla has a very lofty dream of hitting 20 million cars a year by 2030. For context, they currently do 1.3 million a year.

Mexico was included in $370bn worth of green subsidies that Joe Biden announced, which is why it’s easier to outsource production at a low cost.

Electric. 🔋

Hope you enjoyed this issue of Market Munch. If you’ve got any feedback - good or bad (😏) you can hit reply to this email and I'll get a ping in my inbox. Thanks a ton for reading!

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Cheers, and have a lovely day. 🙏

- Aryaansh ⚡