Happy Saturday, Munchers! 🙏

Hope your Friday partying was awesome. The heavens have parted yet again in Dubai and we've been greeted by some lovely showers. Perfect way to kick the weekend off.

As always, here is your daily dose of the news that matters, from Wall Street to Dalal Street - in 4 minutes and 47 seconds.

Yesterday, belts got tighter across Wall Street, Adani shed a fifth of it's value, and Stripe knocked on VC doors. 🔥

Let’s dive in.

What’s hot, what’s not?

Market Commentary

• Wall Street stocks inched higher after a choppy and volatile trading session. The Fed's 'favorite' bit of inflation data came in - the PCE. It ticked slightly higher and set some rate hike debates back into motion, but nothing too bad.

• Consumer spending also declined for the second consecutive month. Looks like chaos reins supreme at the supermarket. 😬

• Shares in some blockbuster companies also tanked, with Intel falling 10% and Chevron falling 3%. Stuff is slowing down.

Story Roundup

1 - Big boys of Wall Street take jumbo pay cuts. 💸

The hotshots of Wall Street aren't having a great 2023.

Both Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley made their CEOs take pay cuts and bonuses have been bashed across the company.

Their golden investment banking operations have been hitting the brakes because of a global dealmaking slumps.

Junior bankers are spending less time making PowerPoints, but there's also lesser food on the table.

Wages in the world of finance are tied very closely with the company's performance. When the latter takes a hit, the former always goes down.

It's the world's smallest violin, and it's playing just for Goldman. 🎻

2 - Adani bloodshed bumps billions off their market cap. 🔪

Blood seems to be the theme for Dalal Street, and India's golden boy seems to be under fire.

Adani owned entities shed $52 billion in value yesterday.

$52 BILLION.

Shares in Adani's main company fell 20 percent - the rest all the way from 5 to 20% down too.

The culprit behind this bloodbath is short-seller Hindenburg Research, who accused Asia's richest guy of an elaborate stock manipulation and accounting fraud scheme.

Adani was actually going for India's largest $2.5bn FPO, which had 150% oversubscription as of yesterday morning.

Flash to today? Only 1%.

Insane how one Tweet took a guy from 3rd richest in the world to 7th richest.

Billion-dollar games. 😅

3 - Stripe goes out, hat in hand. 🎩

Looks like the party days are over, and the cash-strapped days are back!

Stripe is going fundraising, and they're heading for a down round.

A down round is when you raise money at a lower valuation than previously.

In their case, it's a move of $95 billion -> $55 billion. That's a 40% haircut.

They're not gonna use this money for day-to-day expenses, but instead to cover a suspiciously large tax bill on employee stock.

The only salvation?

Stripe won't be the only ones. The entire fintech + web3 world has seen industry giants slash valuations to get the cash pumping.

Tough times. 🤔

4 - Israel sends some heat toward Gaza. 💣

The whole world's eyes are trained on Ukraine, but the Israel-Palestine dogfights have now been put into the frame.

Israeli jets bombed Gaza overnight in response to some Palestinian rocket fire.

This exchange was the worst day of violence for years - and it's a massive flare-up.

It's also the first clash since Ben Netanyahu's hardline government took the reins.

Maybe the right isn't always right. ☹️

5 - Investors send their Dollars flying East. ✈️

The no-brainer play of 2022 was "short tech, long oil".

The no-brainer play of 2023 is much easier.

It's "long East". Full stop.

Investors are piling into emerging market stocks and bonds at a near record rate. Just this week, EM equity and debt markets attracted $1.1 billion in inflows on a daily basis.

There's a lot of gas in the tank and China's reopening is just fuel to the fire.

Inflation is falling, wages are growing, and business is booming. 🚀

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