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- Market Munch 🍎 | 23 March 2023
Market Munch 🍎 | 23 March 2023
eToro goes under the axe, TikTok gets their arms up, and people shell out cash for Netflix. 🔥
Aryaansh Rathore
March 22, 2023
Happy morning, Munchers! 🙏
Ramadan Kareem. Bless up to those of you that celebrate. I’m excited for all the Iftars to come. 💀
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, eToro saw their valuation slip, TikTok got ready for a regulatory boxing match, and Netflix saw their ad-tier get booming. 🔥
Let’s dive in.
What’s hot, what’s not?
Market Commentary
The Fed kept their foot on the accelerator despite all the banking boom and bust. Looks like someone’s trying to regain lost trust. 💀
Nike’s quarterly results beat Wall Street’s expectations. Big beat on the top line, bigger beat on the bottom. The interesting thing though? Sales in China fell almost 8%. Guess Xi needs to step his game up fast.
Markets remained SUPER choppy and we saw a ton of volatility across almost every asset class. Pray.
Story Roundup
Remember the eToro ads?
The ones that plagued your YouTube for the better part of 2 years?
Well, there’s a reason that you don’t see them anymore.
Turns out that all is not well at eToro.
They just scored a $250 million fundraise at a scrappy $3.5bn valuation.
It’s a very stunning change in fortunes. This time last year, eToro wanted to go public via a SPAC at a $10.4 billion price tag.
That’s a ~70% erosion of value, plus there are many more challenges to come.
The average Joe is more worried about putting food on the table than gambling over the next penny stock that comes around, which hurts low-cost retail brokers.
Their trading volume plummets - along with their revenues.
As they say… every dog has his day. 🐶
Joe Biden has been escalating threats against TikTok, and the battle will officially start today.
TikTok’s CEO will be appearing in front of Congress, and he will have to answer some tough questions in front of the government’s big, bright lights.
Joe Biden and his buddies want to get TikTok banned in America over security concerns, so Mr. CEO will have to do a good (if not a great) job at defending his app.
The average American spends 48 minutes per day on TikTok and 2.5 hours daily across all social media.
Maybe if that time was spent on working hard, the country would be moving ahead. 😜
If you're a tech business, all roads lead to ads.
And Netflix is following that very path.
They launched ads 6 months back and are enjoying the results so far.
The 1-million user mark has been crossed, which leads to around $84mn in annual revenue, assuming that no other catastrophes take place.
But Netflix is having some adoption issues.
So far, 19% of all new Netflix subs chose the ad-supported tier.
Disney Plus had 36% and HBO had 24%.
But the big test for consumers is still ahead, when Netflix rolls out their measures that crack-down on password sharing.
Netflix hopes that if users are price-sensitive enough to “share” accounts with an ex, they might be willing to shell out $7 for movies with ads.
But time will tell where they go. 🗺️
The BNPL drama lives another day.
Kredivo is a startup that extends a helping hand of credit to unbanked Southeast Asians and they just landed a giant $270 million round.
In Asia, you are equally as likely to see a unicorn in real life and in a VC’s portfolio.
Kredivo offers micro-loans, BNPL, personal cards, neobanking, and other credit services.
They’ve also committed $1 billion toward growing their loan book and are splashing cash on everything they can.
This one actually looks solid. 🧱
Money is in the air, and most of it is taking a one-way trip to Dubai.
The glitz and glam is doing very well at supporting the housing market, with prices and sales ripping almost every week.
Dubai managed the pandemic very well, which left their arms open to -
- Europeans seeking a sunkissed life
- Russians rushing away from the war
- Indians setting up generations
- Chinese fleeing COVID restrictions
All this demand has led to an insane spike in prices, with most villas almost doubling in value over the last 2 years.
Dubai bling. Literally.
Hope you enjoyed this issue of Market Munch. If you’ve got any feedback - good or bad (😏) you can hit reply to this email and I'll get a ping in my inbox. Thanks a ton for reading!
Cheers, and have a lovely day. 🙏
- Aryaansh ⚡