Happy weekend, Munchers! 🙏

As always, here is your daily dose of the news that matters, from Wall Street to Dalal Street - in 4 minutes and 52 seconds.

That's less time than it takes for Elon to close the damn deal, mortgage rates to scare buyers away, and Amazon to burn $60bn of value.🔥

Let’s dive in.

What’s hot, what’s not?

Market Commentary

• Big tech bruises didn't faze anyone as markets climbed higher in this week's dead cat bounce.

• Oil prices have been stable - but still very high. That's pushed quite a few oil majors to record earnings.

• US PCE index came in, and it's telling us that the average Joe is getting some modest inflation relief.

Story Roundup

1 - Elon Musk frees the bird. 🐦

The richest guy in the world strolled into the Twitter office with a toilet sink and fired the CEO.

The deal's final price tag came to $46.5 billion - $44b for Twitter itself and $2.5b for closing costs (that's lawyers, bankers, regulatory stuff, etc).

Here's a little breakdown of how Elon did this - - $33.5 billion from Elon- $4.6 billion from Saudi prince Al Waleed bin Talal al Saud- $2.5 billion from Oracle CEO Larry Ellison- $7.9 billion from banks like Morgan Stanley and Bank of America

Starting Monday, Elon wants to reverse lifetime bans, start cutting down on headcount, and make some changes to the product.

Maybe he's just helping the bird spread it's wings. 🤷

2 - Surging borrowing costs spook homebuyers. 🎃

Halloween season is upon us, and mortgage rates are doing anything but treating homebuyers.

Rates just topped out at 7% - breaking a 20 year record, and squeezing everyone who wants to buy a house.

2 years back, you could cop a 30yr mortgage at a 2.8% rate. Seems fine.

With an average home price of $405k, that's a $1,300 monthly payment.

Let's cut to today. A 30-yr mortgage sits at 7% (doubled, then some more).

Current average home price is $547k - so your monthly payments are well above $2,800.

In short - homebuyers are being squeezed at an unseen pace.

House... of cards? 🏠

3 - Amazon's woes cement further. 😞

The world's largest e-commerce business seems to be on tilt.

Amazon shares plummeted about 13% after earnings came out - recovering to a 6% loss later in the day.

Their core Amazon Web Services revenue came in below expectations - $20.5bn vs. $22.1bn expected.

Overall revenue weighed in at 15% - back to the double digits, but still below what Wall Street had in mind.

The nail in the coffin was some pretty poor predictions for the fourth quarter.

Amazon expects to post about $140-$146bn - far below expectations of $155bn.

They're dealing with a rocky business environment just like everyone else - macro headwinds, soaring inflation, and rising interest rates.

The race is now on. 🏎️

4 - Tesla rival hits a profit home run. 💸

Chinese EV company BYD seems to be on a ripper.

They shrugged off supply chain disruptions, higher competition, and evaporating demand to deliver year-on-year profit growth of 350%.

These results are key - since they also unveiled a plan to tackle European carmakers in their own home ground. This will be the first time BYD does big business abroad, and investors are tuned in.

BYD is Tesla's biggest challenger, since they compete both on price and quality - something that no other EV business can match.

Consumers are readily swapping their fuel hungry beasts for elegant electric machines that glide down the road - and it's showing.

Electrifying. ⚡

5 - Exxon almost becomes the most profitable company in America. 🫰

Talk about a money machine.

Last quarter, ExxonMobil did just under $20bn of profit.

This follows on from a strong run of oil and gas prices - which still remain to be super, super high.

Investors are obviously very happy, but results like this put Exxon in the crosshairs of politicians - like US president Joe Biden who's blamed oil companies for insane inflation in energy prices.

And to counteract this, Exxon's CEO obviously pushed against a windfall tax on oil companies, as well as proposals to introduce an oil price cap.

Big money. 😂

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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