Happy Monday, Munchers! 🙏

Hope your weekend went well. Onto the second last week of 2022. What a run it's been.

I doubt I need to say much about yesterday's spectacle. Probably the best sporting event I've ever seen. Messi has earned his GOAT status. 🐐

As always, here is your daily dose of the news that matters, from Wall Street to Dalal Street - in 4 minutes and 59 seconds.

Over the weekend, COVID catastrophes rocked Chinese supply chains, America pushed for more oil drilling, and BlackRock went on a big cash-grab. 🔥

Let’s dive in.

What’s hot, what’s not?

Market Commentary

• Bonus cuts are gonna be sweeping Wall Street. Belts are tightening across most big banks as hiring freezes, pay takes a cut, and staff gets culled. ✂️

• Central banks are pointing to a challenging 2023. They've been super pessimistic in both their actions with rates and their guidance. Bumpy path ahead, so strap in. 💥

• UK growth data is scheduled later this week, and it's gonna pull back the curtain on consumer spending.

Story Roundup

1 - Chinese economy gets COVID-crippled. 💣

We're getting flashbacks of 2020.

And China is at the center of it all.

Pharmacies are running out of medicine, schools are moving classes online, and employers are getting people to work from home.

The chink in Beijing's armour seems to be their lack of preparation for a lifestyle that's 'normal'.

As China rolled back COVID restrictions in an attempt to get their economy up and running again, they unleashed a wave of Corona that's crippling daily life.

2022. More like 2020 too. 🤷🏼

2 - White House claims that reducing oil drilling is un-American. 🤦🏼

This week, one of President Biden's closest advisors called a reduction in shale drilling 'un-American'.

The head of America's biggest oil operator has something else in mind.

Texas-based Pioneer Natural Resources is a $55bn company, and they are under some pressure from the government.

Government wants them to ramp up oil production to help ease price pressures (and earn a healthy slice of tax income), but Pioneer thinks that it could all go terribly wrong.

Pouring profits into faster growth at the expense of shareholders could send the energy sector to the bottom of the stock market.

Slippery business. 😳

3 - BlackRock pulls in some serious cash. 💸

The little guys like BlackRock.

Since the start of the year, they've netted almost $144bn from retail investors, and it's miles ahead of the competition.

For a sense of perspective, their number 2 competitor (Vanguard) did $22bn in net inflows.

The overall retail fund management market has seen net outflows of almost $140bn - and that is some serious $$$.

BlackRock is one of the most profitable companies in the world.

They're up there for a reason. 🛢️

4 - Germany sets up a gas terminal. ⛽

Germany got independence in 1949.

But for energy, it's still reliant on others.

Yesterday marked a very big step in their quest toward energy security as they opened a floating natural gas terminal in the North Sea.

A ship the size of 3 football fields (the Esperanza) is coming in today with enough gas to supply 50k households for a year.

This gas will be fed into the terminal and shot out over Germany.

Pretty cool stuff. 😮‍💨

5 - ChatGPT sets off cheating wave. 🤣

AI is looking set to kill academia.

Universities are getting a little worried about this.

Imagine if a student could use an AI to write a PhD thesis that refers to a limitless trove of data, has crisp and clear vocab, and without a spelling mistake too.

The problem? AI like that is already here.

Professors and academics are urging universities to shuffle up the way that they assess work, since getting a clean sheet by cheating is pretty easy.

Buzzkill. 😦

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