Happy morning, Munchers!

Here is your daily dose of the news that matters, from Wall Street to Dalal Street - in 5 minutes and 11 seconds.

Let’s dive in.

What’s hot, what’s not

Market Commentary

• US stocks closed more-or-less flat over geopolitical tensions in China. (more below) ⚔️

• India stocks closed flat too as banking stocks pared losses suffered by IT companies. 📉

• All eyes on UK, US and China PMI later this week, with India's RBI also having an interest rate decision on Friday. 😬

Story Roundup

1 - Nancy Pelosi pulls up to Taiwan and Chinese stocks plummet. 📉

Defying threats of a Chinese military response, Nancy Pelosi arrived in Taiwan.

This is the first time we've had an American rep visit Taiwan in over 25 years - and it's done nothing but strain US-China relations.

Shortly after she landed, she said that her visit "represented America's commitment to support an unwavering democracy".

Before Pelosi's touchdown, the Chinese army staged a couple of air and sea manoeuvres in the Taiwan Strait.

Chinese stocks didn't like this - any possible escalation is BAD news.

2 - European imports of Russian fuel jump. 🛢️

European countries imported 22% more Russian fuel in the month of July.

This is a big problem for their plan of boycotting fuel from Russia - leaving Moscow cash-strapped and choking funding for their assault on Ukraine.

The bloc has vowed to reduce imports of Russian energy to zero by Feb '23 - a target that now seems increasingly out of focus.

I doubt they'll be able to completely isolate themselves from Russian energy - because Europe depends on Russia for about 40% of their energy.

Interesting times.

3 - Uber warmly welcomes investors with their first cash-flow positive quarter. 🚀

Uber was founded 13 years back - and it's been a long decade for their investors.

Since their founding, they've burned through $25bn of funding to get to a pretty big milestone - their first cash-flow positive quarter.

Q2 FCF (free cash flow) stood at about $382m - significantly higher than the $109m that analysts were predicting.

The stock responded well too - up about 20% by the end of the day.

Overall, they still posted a net loss but that was because of their poorly-performing investments in self-driving company Aurora, Grab, and Zomato (which is down 70% on the year).

4 - Ambani tops the lot in a 5G spectrum auction. 🏆

Everyone's been talking about the Indian government's 5G spectrum auction - because it's an indirect battle of Asia's richest men.

This time, Mukesh Ambani's Jio outdid Gautam Adani's Adani Group with a total spend of almost $12bn - where Adani stood at about $30m.

Jio won rights to all the frequencies in the super-efficient but costly 700MHz band.

Costly since they paid almost 81% over the base rate after a pretty bitter head-to-head with Sunil Bharti Mittal's Airtel.

Electrifying.

5 - Robinhood is robbing da hood. 🪶

In the latest development for a company who's fortune changed with the pandemic, Robinhood is laying off about 25% of their workforce.

Robinhood is an internet retail broker, enabling individual investors to trade with as little as $10.

They used this very well while raising money for their IPO - touting that 50% of all retail accounts opened in the US were on their platform.

Flash forward to today, they've lost 50% of their market cap since peak, erasing about $10bn of value.

To quote them, “We have seen additional deterioration of the macro environment, with inflation at 40-year highs accompanied by a broad crypto market crash”.

Fingers crossed. 🤞

Aaaand that’s a wrap.

Happy day guys.

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Thanks a ton for reading. Hope you enjoyed it. Any feedback is open - positive or negative. Hit my line at [email protected] or https://www.linkedin.com/in/aryaansh/.