Happy morning, 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.

Yesterday, Adani ji was forced to put off acquisition plans, Nestle made markets sad with sadder sales, and Renault pointed a big finger at Tesla. 🔥

Let’s dive in.

What’s hot, what’s not?

Market Commentary

• Some volatility spread to the Lalas on Dalal Street as markets remained choppy after some mixed news coming out of earnings reports across the country. Seatbelts on, nice and tight.

• Some super-hot wholesale inflation made stocks tick down a little. Higher prices mean that the Fed can keep their pedal on the metal when it comes to tightening the economy.

• Stubborn inflation in the US is forcing investors to drop bets on rates being cut soon. Nature will heal - just not in the next 3-6 months. 🤣

Story Roundup

1 - Adani’s cash crunch gets real. 💸

India’s richest guy (no more) is in a rush to cut costs, and it’s showing.

His electricity unit had to put the brakes on a $900 million power station acquisition.

They’re avoiding the purchases of big assets that will take time to earn them big bucks - which is fair, given how much scrutiny they’ve been put under.

But there’s one big problem with slowing growth down.

Adani baba built his empire on a debt-fuelled breakneck expansion. He bought, built, and developed everything he could lay his eyes on.

That’s why investors were okay with paying a 1000X PE multiple for his business.

In other words, he was rising to the skies hella fast. Which is fair, because a man in no hurry gets nowhere quickly.

But Adani has to slow down with his spending, that means he’ll have to sacrifice his growth.

And that could make some waves. The same big-ticket investors might not be comfortable shelling out these big-bucks for a faltering business.

What goes up fast, comes down even faster. 😨

2 - Office lights get a little dimmer at Nestle. 📉

Households are feeling the inflation pinch, and that’s made them slow down spending on KitKat bars, Maggi noodles, and Nespresso pods.

All of this has pinched Nestle’s margins even harder - and given markets a bit of a wake-up call.

Real growth (which measures consumer choices + sales volume) declined by 2.6% while prices were hiked 10%.

Only a few items have chilled out with the inflation game, which means that Nestle is looking at a very bleak picture for the full year.

The average Joe is holding up much better than expected, but his coffers are running low.

Strap in, folks! 💥

3 - Renault’s top dogs get angry at Tesla’s price tag trimming. ✂️

A few months back, Tesla started cutting prices for their top vehicles.

Stuff was getting out of control and customers were unwilling to splash so much cash on a life-sized battery operated Hot Wheels.

This might seem great for the 99% of people that don’t have a Tesla, but the 1% got very, very angry.

Cutting prices destroys value for customers and damages confidence in their vehicles.

The knock-on effect is a hit on the entire EV sector, which has caused a little grumbling between the big boys.

Renault is raising an eyebrow and have denounced Tesla’s price cuts.

But hey, Tesla can perform without 75% of it’s market cap the same way Twitter can perform without 75% off it’s employees. 🐦

4 - KPMG sharpens their axe. 🪓

Turns out that not even the Big 4 can’t escape economic reality.

KPMG has let go of a few teams - not massive numbers, just about 700 job cuts.

It’s not a market-moving figure or anything to shake things up much, but it signals to markets that even consultants are realising that they need to realign with the market.

KPMG’s business outlook still remains super strong since businesses have more problems to solve today than ever before.

A little uncertainty hurt no one. 😴

5 - America gives Tesla a big check to electrify everything. ⚡

What debt ceiling?

Joe Biden is waving around America’s chequebook, and Elon Musk is dancing in dollars.

The US Govt. just laid out plans for 500k EV chargers along American highways and they’ve also required that all of these EV chargers be funded through their Inflation Reduction Act.

So Tesla will get a $7.5 billion bite of this juicy, juicy pie to set up Superchargers all along the US.

Do big things… with money that isn’t yours. That’s the name of the game.

Charged up. 🔋

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 ⚡