Happy morning, Munchers! 🙏

As always, here's your daily dose from Wall Street to Dalal Street - in 4 minutes and 50 seconds.

That's less time than it takes for the US Fed to hike 75bps, Russia to mobilize an army, and for the UK to cut energy prices.

Let’s dive in.

What’s hot, what’s not?

 Market Commentary

• The US central bank just raised it's key interest rate by 75 basis points. 📈

• US Dollar is currently hovering at 20-year highs and is choking corporate profits. 💸

• Yields on US government debt bumped to the highest they've been in 10 years. 🔥

Story Roundup

1 - US Fed swoops in with a 75bp hike. 🦅

The big news of the night - US Fed clutched up and delivered a 0.75% hike to their benchmark interest rate. 

Here's a roundup of the guidance that they dropped - 

1 - Lower growth forecasts.Fed revised their growth predictions for the US - and cut them for both 2023 and 2024. If the captain of the ship sees choppy waters ahead - you should probably buckle up. 

2 - A more hawkish Fed.The Fed dot-plot is below this snippet A dot-plot records each US Fed official's projections for the benchmark interest rate. Markets were pricing in a peak of 4.5% - however this data shows a Fed that's more aggressive in hiking rates. 

3 - Labour is still strong.The strength of the jobs market has given the Fed the green light to spam more hikes at an aggressive pace. Updated forecasts show unemployment rising to 4.4% next year.

To quote Powell himself - "there will be pain".

2 - Vladimir Putin mobilises his army and issues a nuclear threat. 💥

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has been ailing. 

They suffered their greatest loss of troops since WW2, and they lost a lot of territory back to Ukraine's forces.

In response, they've mobilized a reserve force and threatened to use "Russia's nuclear arsenal" if their "territorial integrity is threatened".

This warning sparked alarm across the world - with world leaders hitting out at Putin's open nuclear threats to Europe.

It's high-school bullying. 🤷

3 - Germany nationalises struggling utility company Uniper. ⚡

The German government's pulled out the largest bailout since 2008. 

Berlin will be providing a much-needed lifeline to the $29 billion utility business Uniper. 

Currently, they're losing $100m a day due to sky-high energy prices.

That's a big, scary number that's added up quickly to give them total losses of $8.5bn since the energy crisis kicked off.

Godspeed. 💡

4 - UK government steps in to cut business energy prices by 50%. ✂️

The UK will cut wholesale energy prices to businesses and public organisations by at least 50% this winter.

Officials highlighted the governments attempt to "step in to stop businesses collapsing". 

So far, the price cap on household energy prices seems to be helping ease inflation - with CPI dropping for the last month in the UK.

This scheme seems very rosy and has lovely intentions - but there's one big question hovering over it.

Where's the money coming from? 💰

5 - Citigroup to get out of their British retail banking biz. 🏃‍♂️

Citigroup is planning to shut down it's UK retail bank. They want to focus on their wealthier clients.

They said that they would be inviting their HNW clients to join their private bank as they wind down their retail arm - and customers ineligible for the higher-end services will have their accounts shut down.

They didn't try to sell it - mainly because of how small the business is. 

Change of target. 🎯

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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