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 54 seconds.

Yesterday, Japan stunned markets and handed bond bears a win, Broadcom's beefy $69 billion acquisition came under the microscope, and Putin warned of some escalation to the war. 🔥

Let’s dive in.

What’s hot, what’s not?

Market Commentary

• Bond bears were handed a big win yesterday with the BoJ's decision to loosen it's yield cap. Borrowing costs for Japan are now higher, and it's looking rocky on the macro end.

• Stocks oscillated between the red and the green as investors weighed some macro data that's gonna be released soon.

• Treasuries and other government bonds dumped pretty hard too. All a fallout of Japan's policy pivot. 💀

Story Roundup

1 - Bank of Japan pulls out it's trap card. 🃏

For years now, the Bank of Japan has gone against the wave.

While the world tightens their economies up, they've kept things loose.

Yesterday, they sent shockwaves across stock markets, bond markets, and the world of currencies.

The BoJ will now allow 10-year Japanese government bonds to trade as high as 0.5%.

Yen roared at this news, surging almost 4% against the dollar.

Better late than never.

2 - EU officials probe into Broadcom's blockbuster $69bn deal. 💸

Euopean regulators are poking their nose into 2022's second biggest acquisition.

Broadcom scooped up cloud-tech company VMware, and the cops think that they could be a monopoly in the tech industry.

They're concerned that Broadcom could use VMware software and hardware to restrict competition in key markets.

Broadcom is adamant that all is good.

Time will tell where this goes. 🤷🏼

3 - Putin acknowledges reality. 😬

Russia's Ukraine offensive is about to have it's 10-month birthday, and we are none-the-wiser.

Vladimir Putin admitted yesterday that working in the annexed regions of Ukraine was "hard".

He also said that things are looking "confusing", at a time when Russian troops are running out of key resources to keep their attack alive.

Looks like a win. 🏆

4 - Media groups get battered big time. 💥

The average Joe's belt has been tightened quite a bit.

And when the average Joe becomes stingier with his wallet, this hands advertising companies a backhand slap across the face.

More than $500 billion has been wiped off the biggest media companies this year as investors soured on quite a few innovations.

The streaming revolution was disbanded by investors as they figured out that ad revenue is gonna be harder to come by, which makes it hell to keep the lights on in the office.

Yikes. 💀

5 - Wells Fargo gets forced to pay up. 🤦🏼

The rules are always different for those with deeper pockets.

Wells Fargo was just forced to pay a $3.7 billion fine over mismanagement of money over the last 11 years.

This is the largest penalty that consumer protection regulators have ever imposed. Ever.

Wells Fargo will be forced to pay consumers over $2 billion for "misplacing" their mortgages, bank accounts, and car loans.

They apparently illegally assessed fees, added random interest charges, and wrongly repossessed customers' mortgage/vehicle loans.

Oh man. 😳

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