Happy Friday, folks! 🙏

Hope you have a good weekend. The foggy winter clouds have finally decided to ditch us in Dubai. We’re all a part of God’s giant microwave meal for the next 4 months.

Bless up and enjoy the weekend partying.

As always, here is your daily dose of the news that matters, from Wall Street to Dalal Street - in 4 minutes and 53 seconds.

Yesterday, Tesla’s biggest competitor benefitted from Elon’s strategy, Alibaba steamrolled forward with an IPO map, and Abu Dhabi’s sheikhs got in line for the throne. 🔥

Let’s dive in.

What’s hot, what’s not?

Market Commentary

• Despite notching the $30k mark and giving tons of crypto bros the confidence to log back into their Binance accounts, Bitcoin volumes are still SUPER LOW. Lowest they’ve been in 10 months. Could be a sign of odd things to come.

• Financials turned lower and US markets parerd their previous gains. Mike Burry finally gave in and wished that he didn’t short everything. 🤣

• Fed officials said that more tightening is needed and that banks are (more or less) fine.

Story Roundup

1 - Tesla’s price gun backfires big time. 💣

A few months back, Elon baba realised that things were gonna get hot in the EV space.

So he did what a sensible operator would do when sitting on a high margin.

He cut prices for all Teslas in January. Then he did it again in Feb. And he did it again this month.

Now these price cuts were an attempt to gain more market share, but it turns out that plan backfired pretty quickly.

Consumers are loving BYD’s newer and cheaper models and the numbers definitely show it.

BYD sold more than 5x the vehicles that Tesla did in the Chinese EV market - which is one that Tesla was starting to have a grasp on.

Foreign brands are bleeding market share by the day and the biggest advantage that BYD has when keeping costs low is that they own everything.

From the cobalt mines to the battery plants to the actual car manufacture - they own the entire value chain.

Electric. ⚡

2 - Alibaba powers through with the IPO plans. 🚀

Yesterday, Jack Ma decided to play fruit ninja with his company and split it up into six business units.

Turns out that the first chunk is here.

Alibaba’s logistics arm is all-set to go public in Hong Kong with a current valuation of $20 billion+.

The company’s name is Cainiao (which translates to rookie 🤨) and they promise to deliver packages pan-China within 24 hours and 72 hours for anywhere else globally.

They own 15 sorting centers globally and directly/indirectly manage over 500 companies.

Seems like a super-boring business, but it’s bringing home money very well.

Revenue in 2022’s 4th quarter ALONE was $2.4 billion, partly because of how much of a boon the pandemic has been for businesses like Cainiao. (remember, China only forgot about COVID until recently lol)

Boxed in. 📦

3 - UAE sees some sheikh shuffling. 🔥

In the Gulf region, power changes hands through brothers, cousins and sons.

And the world’s richest royal family just named their successors.

Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed’s son Sheikh Khaled is now crown price - and he’s been groomed for this for a long, long time.

He’s been a big player in the Abu Dhabi executive council and the UAE’s security body for a long while.

Sheikh Mohammed’s brothers Sheikh Tahnoon and Sheikh Hazza were also made deputy rulers of Abu Dhabi.

Solid succession. 🤷🏻

4 - Ford splashes big bucks on a battery plant. 🔋

Ford is placing a heavy bet.

They’re co-investing around $4.5 billion into a battery materials plant in Indonesia.

But that’s not the problematic part.

The issues start trickling in when you look at the guys coming in with Ford on this deal. The biggest supplier and co-operator to this battery plant is gonna be Chinese-owned Huayou Cobalt.

Oh, and Ford can avail of US subsidies to build this plant.

They’re praying that shuffling China into the supply chain doesn’t backfire and draw criticism from Uncle Sam and the folks sitting in the government.

But all is fair in love, war, and business. 🤷🏻

5 - India slaps charges on their payments grid. 💳

The meme says it all.

UPI came and gave digital payments in India a massive boost while completely knocking out all other forms of payment.

UPI has been free ever since it launched - but the rules are changing a little bit from tomorrow.

Merchants that accept over 2,000 INR in a single transaction will have to pay a 1.1% transaction fee.

But this only applies when you pay from Wallet A to a company that has Wallet B. Nothing changes for everyone else.

We’ll definitely see some jugaadu stuff come out of this. 🙈

Hope you enjoyed this issue of Market Munch. If you’ve got any feedback - good or bad (😏) you can hit reply to this email and I'll get a ping in my inbox. Thanks a ton for reading!

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Cheers, and have a lovely day. 🙏

- Aryaansh ⚡