Happy morning, Munchers! 🙏

My exams are over (along with the post-exam chilling). Some interesting things are in store. But until then, back to your regularly scheduled programming. 🫡

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, Blackrock and JP Morgan took a plane to Ukraine, India’s aviation industry scored a big win, and BYJU’s slashed more jobs.

Let’s dive in.

What’s hot, what’s not?

Market Commentary

• Looks like the good days might be coming back. China’s central bank decided to slash interest rates to give their economy a boost. A 1-year prime loan will now cost you 3.55% (vs 3.65%) and a 5-year one will cost you 4.2% (vs 4.3%).

• Australia’s central bank thinks that we are walking a very tight tightrope with inflation. They’ve considered pausing rate hikes but are worried about a tight labour market and sticky inflation.

• Some steam is coming back slowly - US homebuilder sentiment hit a 1-year high and US business activity just quickened to a 13-month high too. 🤷🤷

Story Roundup

1 - Blackrock and JP Morgan team up to fix Ukraine’s finances. 💸

In March, Ukraine estimated that they’d need $411 billion to rebuild the country after the war.

The best solution?

Hire a consultant.

Ukraine spoke to Blackrock, JP Morgan, and McKinsey to figure out how they’d raise the money and how they’d actually go about fixing things up.

Initially, these firms were “donating” their services - but that gave them time to get up, close, and personal with some investment opportunities in Ukraine.

And that’s exactly what they did.

Blackrock and JPM are teaming up to create a Ukraine reconstruction bank, although no numbers have been set in stone yet.

Because in our world, one thing is always true.

No one ever fires the guy who hired a consultant. 🤷

2 - BYJU’s report card bleeds a little more. 📉

There seems to be no end to the ed-tech circus.

BYJU’s just fired 1,000 more employees and 2,500 third-party contractors.

Money is starting to get tight for BYJU, and it’s showing.

They’re trying to cut costs anywhere they possibly can - and the easiest way to do this is to lay off your workers.

They’ve also been rolling back benefits for employees, disqualifying THEIR OWN lenders, and refusing to pay back loans.

This is ugly. Very ugly. 🤦

3 - Airbus shakes hands with an Indian airline. ✈️

18 years ago, Rahul Bhatia ordered 100 airplanes at the Paris Air Show to get his airline started.

Over the next few years, made his airline IndiGo the biggest one in India.

And yesterday, he placed a $50 billion dollar order for 500 more planes.

IndiGo is a budget airline, so they bought in bulk for a hefty discount.

This is also the largest order by any airline ever - and it takes IndiGo’s order book to over 1k planes.

That means a thousand more planes are yet to be inducted into their air-force.

Crazy stuff. 🌍

4 - Germany slaps billions of subsidies onto Intel. ⚡

German regulators shook hands with the folks at Intel for a massive $11 billion subsidy.

This money is gonna go toward a semiconductor facility - for which Intel is putting up $32 billion of their own money.

It’s the largest FDI investment every made into Germany, and Intel needs it badly for 3 reasons.
1 - They need to step their semiconductor game up QUICK to match the firepower of folks like TSM and Nvidia.
2 - They need to diversify away from the US, since it’s much cheaper everywhere else
3 - They need tons of money to pump into high-class R&D to build an ecosystem that the others are jealous of.

Electrifying. ⚡

5 - Crypto bros get put under the microscope. 🔬

If you thought the drama was over, think again.

Crypto.com just got into some hot water with regulators.

In most markets, exchanges match buyers with sellers at the most competitive, most transparent, and best price. The actual market making and other prop trading is done by other private companies.

In Crypto.com’s case - it’s not like that.

They have internal teams that trade tokens for profit.

If this doesn’t sound bad - imagine your bank making trades against you, with full knowledge of where your money is going and the tokens you’re putting it into.

Crypto.com is one of the 5 biggest exchanges in the world - so their client information and order flow is enough to move markets.

That’s a gold mine of info - enough to make you millions in the worst markets.

Insider trading, 2023 edition. 🤩

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