Happy Thursday, Munchers! 🙏

The skies of Dubai were plastered with some lovely grey clouds. Sweaters on and jackets zipped up tight. Nothing beats chai-pakora in the winter sunshine.

As always, here is your daily dose of the news that matters, from Wall Street to Dalal Street - in 4 minutes and 55 seconds.

Yesterday, crypto miners turned their machines back on, Boeing sent their jets around the globe, and Ukraine called for backup. 🔥

Let’s dive in.

What’s hot, what’s not?

Market Commentary

• Investors seemed moody yesterday. American markets played tug-of-war with the smart money assessing earnings ahead of some all-important US GDP data later this week.

• Microsoft warned of their slowest revenue growth on record and analysts read between the lines. Demand is being destroyed all-around and it's hitting the high-flyers of yesteryears.

• A January bounce is very well in play, with China's reopening and Europe's recession avoidance giving us a little kick. Pray WW3 doesn't start. 😅

Story Roundup

1 - Crypto bros get into a bitcoin battle. ⚔️

100 years back, men used to rough it out from dusk till dawn in the coal mines to provide for their family.

Today, they mine Dogecoin from their computers while watching Netflix.

Crypto has made a half-hearted comeback since the start of the year, and crypto bros are turning their PCs back on.

Many miners are sitting on a lot of high quality computer gear, but crypto crash discouraged them from doing anything.

Sentiment seems to be getting better and the activity on blockchains is ticking up by the day. Hash rates (the amount of computer power) on the Bitcoin blockchain is double what it was in July of last year.

Maybe we'll all be back to free money. 💸

2 - Flurry of flying makes the plane industry take off. ✈️

Boeing just reported their earnings, and things are looking rosy.

Their losses did widen and business weaknesses are yet to come, but there was a very good silver lining.

They just had their first annual cashflow positive quarter since 2018.

China's reopening means that manufacturing giants are gonna resume their big-ticket orders of jetliners.

Plane-makers are gearing up for a fresh jolt of demand and a future where flying isn't outright banned.

If things turn out better-than-expected for the world, the airline industry is gonna be carried upstream.

Takeoff. 🚀

3 - America and Germany send the tanks into war. 💥

Ukraine is confident that they can still win the war.

Their buddies from the West are sending through a free flow of arms, and it looks to be game-changing on the front lines.

America and Germany just dropped some of the world's best battle tanks onto the Ukrainian side.

In short, these are walking death machines.

Russian tech is relatively inferior, so Ukraine now has a few sneaky aces up it's sleeve.

Looks like the tides may be turning. 🌊

4 - Apple beefs up their defence in the "War against Google". 📲

In 2009, Steve Jobs called Android "a stolen product" and declared "thermonuclear war" on Google.

The thermonuclear war is still on, but Apple is making it's moves quite silently.

Their first "attack" was on Google Maps. They made Apple Maps the default on iOS devices (heavens knows why) and refused to make Google apps pre-downloaded.

Their second attack seems to be on Search - they've been working on a feature called "Apple Search" for a while now and it looks to be better than Google.

But the kicker?

Advertising.

Alphabet makes 80% of it's money from ads, so any threats there harm their bottom line.

Cutthroat. 🔪

5 - Adani's empire looks shakier by the day. 😬

"There are 3 ways a smart man can go broke."

"Ladies, liquor, and leverage." - Charlie Munger

Gautam Adani is the richest man in Asia, and leverage had a huge part to play in his rollercoaster ride to the top.

2 years back, no one knew who he was. Cut to today, and the companies that he owns are worth over $250 billion. That's just the public ones.

A well-known American short-seller thinks that something fishy is up. Adani's meteoric, 3,300% rise in under a year raises some red flags, so they decided to investigate.

Turns out those red flags gave way to some horrifying truths, all laid bare in this report.

Adani has denied these claims and called them malicious - but only time will tell.

Balancing on a knife's edge, this one. 😥

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