Happy morning, Munchers! 🙏

As always, here is your daily dose of the news that matters, from Wall Street to Dalal Street - in 5 minutes and 13 seconds.

Yesterday, Russia tried restricting gas flows to Europe again, China locked down as COVID soared, and FTX management hit gold. 🔥

Let’s dive in.

What’s hot, what’s not?

Market Commentary

• Markets stayed happy as not much bad news came out on the macro end.

• Gas prices shot up as Gazprom threatened to cut supplies to Europe.

• Meta stock shot up on rumours that Mark Zuck is resigning next year... and fell back down after he dismissed them. 🤦

Story Roundup

1 - Russia presses down on Europe's Achilles heel... again. ⛽

Russia threatened to restrict gas supplies to western Europe through the only pipeline that still connects both regions.

They did this because Gazprom thinks Ukraine stole gas that was meant for Moldova. 💀

Any threat to this pipeline is very likely to unsettle energy markets, especially with a cold and hard winter in store for us.

We've seen in the past that small cuts in supply can quickly translate to halts entirely - so Europe is definitely on tilt.

Just when you thought your bills were gonna do down too.

2 - Chinese lockdowns reach record levels and COVID soars. 🦠

COVID-19 in China is spiralling to a record high, forcing them to be stricter with their lockdown policies.

About 28k new cases were reported yesterday, a number we haven't seen in a long, long time.

China's aggressive anti-COVID stance has crippled manufacturing, disrupted global economies, and dealt a big blow to their growth.

Markets in China are now very correlated with news of reopening - either rocketing or dumping when lockdowns are announced.

Pretty 2020-esque. 😔

3 - FTX management tracks down $1.24bn in cash. 💰

The new team hired to take the helm of FTX's dumpster fire has located over $1.24 billion in cash.

It's a complete surprise to everyone involved, since filings last week showed that FTX had about $550mn. Looks like the real figure was about 3x more.

However, they still owe over $3.1 billion to all their other creditors - which doesn't make this an easy task.

Markets recovered a little bit after hearing this news, but the industry is still shaken by the FTX contagion. 😷

4 - EU drops the deets on gas price caps. 🧢

If you live in Europe, your gas bills will be capped at more than double today's prices.

Reductions in use are gonna be enforced as well, and it's all in the hope that energy use will slow down ahead of winter.

This price cap isn't a silver bullet that will save Europe, but more of a fallback plan in case things get worse.

Higher gas prices hurt everyone - consumers, businesses, and governments.

So let's hope it doesn't get till there. 🛢️

5 - Mukesh Ambani sets a lofty target for India. 🚀

According to the man behind India's largest enterprise, the Indian economy is gonna grow 13x in the next 25 years.

He reckons that India will sit at a $40 trillion GDP and will drive a clean energy + digital movement across emerging markets.

Mukesh Ambani has a hand in the digital cookie jar - with his telecom giant Jio offering dirt-cheap data to every single Indian, helping hundreds of millions get online.

India has about 800 million smartphones, with more coming online every passing day.

This one's on a rocket ship. 💥

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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