Happy morning, Munchers! 🙏

As always, here is your daily dose of the news that matters, from Wall Street to Dalal Street - in 5 minutes and 13 seconds.

Yesterday, Saudi spent some big bucks on a gaming push, Bytedance launched a lemonade app, and teen-focused fintechs splashed cash on acquisitions. 🔥

Let’s dive in.

What’s hot, what’s not?

Market Commentary

• Oil continued it’s OPEC-powered ripper to the very top. Those gas bills are gonna be mooning soon. Tesla owners rejoice. 💀

• Weak manufacturing data and a decent drop in employment spurred bond markets to notch up higher.

• The bank turmoil and startup slump is taking it’s toll on the economy.

Story Roundup

1 - Saudi plows big bucks into gaming. 🎮

Saudi Arabia is getting ready to go ham on games.

And the price tag is super hefty.

The big boys that control Saudi money have been diversifying the economy away from oil, and one sector that looks super ripe is gaming.

This gaming desire is being channeled through a company called Savvy Games Group - which is gonna be using Saudi state money to develop, publish, and acquire top-tier gaming titles.

Current investment into Savvy sits at a staggering $38 billion.

They have massive ambitions in a very crowded market, and even the veterans of the gaming industry are showing signs of struggle.

But Savvy holds multi-billion dollar stakes in gaming companies already (Nintendo, Tencent, and Activision) - and they now want to go head-to-head with their own portfolio cos.

Maybe the next COD map will be based out of NEOM. 🤷🏻

2 - ByteDance brews up some lemonade. 🍋

When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade.

When the US government tries banning you and shutting down your entire business, you make Lemon8.

Chinese tech titan Bytedance is an enigma of a company. They own all of TikTok, and they’ve been locked in a battle with the US government over privacy and data safety.

While the operations and legal departments have been busy in court, it looks like TikTok’s tech bros built and launched another app.

It’s called Lemon8 - and it’s like if Instagram and Pinterest had a baby.

The algorithm powering it is the same crazy addictive one that TikTok uses.

And if you haven’t heard about Lemon8 yet, it’s for a reason.

Bytedance is only gonna officially start promoting it next month and the app has a “mere” 20 million users for now.

Maybe the market won’t sour on this one. 🤔

3 - Kid-focused fintechs go crazy. 💸

An American savings and investing startup (Acorns) decided to take a hop across the pond and dip their toes into a London-based startup that educates teens to be money-smart (GoHenry).

It’s an all-equity deal, which makes it pretty interesting for the fintech market.

Acorns was last valued at $2 billion in March 2022 and GoHenry last raised $55 million at a $375 million valuation.

If both companies managed to keep their valuations level, it’ll probably be a one-in-a-million chance that the funding winter hasn’t made a dent in their price tag.

The combined company will have around 6 million users, which isn’t a massive amount overall.

And the cherry on top - neither Acorns nor GoHenry were profitable when they last raised money.

Every dog has his day. 🙏🏻

4 - EY gets blacklisted by Germany’s big dogs. 🪓

EY has to say bye-bye to any new clients that are Germany-listed companies.

They’ve been slapped a 2-year ban over their role in the Wirecard scandal and even though it looks like there hasn’t been a formal decision over whether it was intent or negligence.

It’s still a massive deal to thrash a Big 4 with the ban hammer - and this is a first for Germany too.

German regulators themselves said that the punishment was “severe” and “unseen before”.

But hey - you get what you give. 🤦🏻

5 - UFC and WWE get married. 🥊

If you are in Gen X, there is a very good chance you grew up with John Cena and Randy Orton - the WWE (or WWF, if you’re that old).

If you are in Gen Z, there is a very good chance you are growing up with Conor McGregor and Khabib - the UFC.

Turns out that we need to get ready to rumble, since Endeavor (UFC parent company) is spending $9.3 billion on a WWE acquisition.

The new company will be a $22 billion entertainment powerhouse and shares will be listed on the NYSE under the ticker TKO.

Endeavor’s time and money is gonna go toward negotiating better media deals and taking WWE global so that sales pop and costs drop.

Boom. 💥

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 ⚡