Happy morning, Munchers! 🙏

As always, here is your daily dose of the news that matters, from Wall Street to Dalal Street - in 4 minutes and 56 seconds.

Yesterday, Exxon got tired of taxes, coal miners enjoyed a profit party, and crypto bros got charged with fraud. 🔥

Let’s dive in.

What’s hot, what’s not?

Market Commentary

• The weighing scales have been popped out to find the beefiest assets, and it looks like emerging markets ETFs have been on a ripper of outperformance. It's all going East.

• Hong Kong markets rose a little as China loosened Zero-COVID curbs. That means more people buying $15 coffees, and more profits. 🤷🏼

• Russia has grabbed all the West-bound oil and shifted it all back to this end of the pond. India is importing a LOT of oil from them now. 🔥

Story Roundup

1 - Exxon sues Europe over taxes. 🤷🏼

You know that dad joke about how life's only certainties are death and taxes?

Well, oil major Exxon is tired of the latter. And they're hitting back.

Europe recently signed a bill that forced oil producers to pay a 35% windfall tax on profits.

That is a VERY big amount of $$$. $25bn, to be exact.

And it's all meant to go back to the little guy. Most of it is supposed to "help bring down energy bills", probably with price caps and support.

Exxon clearly isn't happy. That's less money in their pockets, and more in the government's.

So they hit back with a lawsuit - arguing that Europe exceeded it's legal authority by introducing these taxes.

Can't tell who the worse party is here. 💀

2 - Coal miners bask in a profit party. 💸

A big apology to Greta Thunberg. Cheap, dirty energy still seems to be king.

Total profits at major coal producers over the last year just topped $97 billion.

That's profit. Not revenue.

Two years back most countries were preaching that the days of coal were over, and green was the way to go.

Cut to today, and the same countries have turned their backs on green energy because of how much cheaper coal is.

Papa Putin has made global energy security a priority, so it looks like we'll be burning dead dinosaurs for a while.

Late-stage capitalism. 🛢️

3 - Kosovo and Serbia lock eyes. Menacingly. 👀

Kosovo just shut down it's corridor to Serbia.

Months of tension have been pushing on the region, but this is the first time it's threatened to spill into conflict.

Serbian border forces have been put at the highest warning level and both sides are serious about a use of force.

The EU and US just called for maximum restraint.

Every other week feels like a new WW3. 🤦🏼

4 - Crypto bros get charged with fraud in the US. 🔨

In October, a crypto exchange called Mango Markets was drained of all it's money.

Yesterday, they caught the cheeky bugger that did it.

Some dude made two accounts on Mango. He then used these two accounts to artificially inflate the value of a futures contract.

In ~20 minutes, he managed to bump that contract up by almost 1300%.

Mango lets customers withdraw money based on the value of their assets, but this dude had inflated his assets' values, so he was able to withdraw a LOT more than he should have.

In short, he took out about $110 million. That was all of Mango's money, and they went under.

Bro thinks he's on SBF's level. 🤣

5 - Twitter's rival says no to becoming a sell-out. 🤑

Mastodon is a new social media, and it's been causing a stir in the social media world.

They do everything that Twitter does, without all the things that Twitter users hate.

Silicon Valley leapt at this idea, and chased them with a fair few bucks.

Mastodon puts morals first, and they said no to outside funding. They'll protect their non-profit status and continue with relying on donations for funding.

It's like a GoFundMe for a BTEC Twitter. Insanely exciting. ⚡

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