Happy morning, Munchers! 🙏

As always, here is your daily dose of the news that matters, from Wall Street to Dalal Street - in 5 minutes and 13 seconds.

Yesterday, FTX got a new leader (who had a go at SBF), Britain's Chancellor dropped a fiscally aggressive budget, and the Saudis took a field trip to Korea. 🔥

Let’s dive in. 🚀

What’s hot, what’s not?

Market Commentary

• US markets dipped into the red after some pretty stern comments from a Fed official.

• It looks like stocks around the world are faltering after one of the craziest dead cat bounces this year.

• The UK bond market is heading for it's greatest test in a while after they released their new Budget. 📊

Story Roundup

1 - FTX's new CEO shuffles the deck up a little. 🤫

A new pair of hands is holding the reigns at FTX. And these ones look capable as hell. 

The man in charge oversaw the liquidation of Enron, and his name is John Ray the III. 

In their bankruptcy filing, he slammed everything that SBF did before him and said that he had "never seen such a complete failure of corporate controls" and such an absence of "trustworthy financial information".

Here are some of the things that went down at pre-bankruptcy FTX - - they never had an accurate list of their own bank accounts- the private keys to FTX's tokens were on an unsecured group email account- company funds were often used to buy homes and other things for staff and advisors- FTX once 'accidentally' gave Alameda $8bn of customer funds. Billion with a B. - payments were approved with emojis (you can't even hate this one 🤣)

What a mess. 

2 - Fed officials hint that rates hikes might pick up. 🚀

A top official at the US Fed warned that interest rate rises have only had a 'limited' impact on inflation.

 He also said that US rates will need to hit 5-5.25% as a minimum to get us in the zone that puts the brakes on economic activity.

It looks like the Fed will be still be hiking, but at a slower rate than before. Uncle Sam's cronies have been remarkable with coming down hard on inflation, and markets are believing their narratives too.

The smart money is backing a 50bps rate increase at the next interest rate meeting. 

Wen recession? 🌚

3 - UK economy darkens with a big fiscal squeeze. 💀

British households are on track for their steepest fall in living standards since World War 2. 

Yeah. That bad. 

A massive fiscal consolidation was announced by Chancellor Jeremy Hunt - with over GBP 30bn of spending cuts and GBP 25bn of tax hikes. 

They're essentially doing one thing - asking for more from those who have more. 

Here's a wrap-up of everything announced - - the top tax rate will now apply to anyone earning over 125k GBP compared with the previous 150k GBP- energy firms now have to pay windfall tax of 35% on profits- energy support given by govt. will go down starting April- govt. departments excluding NHS to see a big cut of spending coming their way- annual healthcare budget increasing by GBP 3.3bn with GBP 2.3bn more investment into schools- state pensions will rise 10.1% to match inflation

Steep. 💥

4 - Saudi wants to take a bite out of the South Korean pie. 🥧

The Middle East wants to sneak a hand into the Asian cookie jar. 

Saudi Arabia's big push into South Korea is worth about $30 billion, and it's a perfect sign of this. 

Aramco is a big part in Saudi's move - they'll be investing about $7 billion into a petrochemical factory in Seoul. 

Korea is gonna start getting a good chunk of spending on petrochemicals, fashion, and cosmetics.

In return, Saudi is gonna get a little help on the railways end - they're building high-speed transit for NEOM and want all hands on deck. 

Looks insane. 🚀

5 - Tata wants to fuse it's sprawling airline empire. ✈️

Tata's faltering aviation empire might be getting a shake-up to wake up. 

 They own Vistara, AirAsia, Air India, and Air India Express. The plan is to combine all of these under the Air India umbrella and get rid of the Vistara brand. 

Tata is also ordering about 300 narrow-body jets, marking one of the largest orders ever in history. 

Air India is also raising about $1 billion at a $5 billion valuation. For decades, these airlines have had a lot of fingers pointed due to their skyrocketing costs, heavy losses, and millions in debt. 

Looks like they might be gearing for takeoff. 🛫

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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