Happy Monday, Munchers! 🙏

Hope you had a lovely and restful weekend... Back to your daily scheduled programming. 😂

As always, here is your daily dose of the news that matters, from Wall Street to Dalal Street - in 4 minutes and 51 seconds.

Yesterday, the FTX fiasco slipped further out of hand, China rolled back on COVID, and PwC preyed on partners.

Let’s dive in.

What's hot, what's not?

Market Commentary

• Traders are still betting that the Fed is gonna go about with cutting interest rates into 2023.

• Soaring commodity prices are leading to an influx of lithium miners into Brazil. Looks to be a gold mine. (Or a lithium one 🤷)

• Investors are eyeing a turning point for Japan's currency as the Yen stages a fierce comeback against the Dollar.

Story Roundup

1 - FTX fraud seems to be a lost cause. 😔

SBF's created a right mess of himself and the billions of dollars that people gave him to play with. 

He insisted that FTX's losses were incurred because of "massive oversights", "huge messups", and a "lack of rigorous thinking".

The media blitz has been reckless too, painting FTX's true colors in a time when transparency is very rare in the crypto world.

SBF barely seems to know what's going on, and every word he says is planned and scripted.

Moral of the story? Never give a 5 year old a billion dollars. Ever.

2 - China rolls back on COVID measures as people go wild. 💉

Chinese health authorities are pointing the finger at local governments for being lazy with COVID outbreaks. 

They're saying that governments didn't help with - vaccinations of elderly- timely shutdowns and lockdowns as needed- going "overboard" on restrictions

After these complaints, the government rolled this stuff out - boosted vaccinations for the elderly- possible softening of COVID lockdowns- restrictions could start to trickle away

Coincidence of the century?

3 - PwC goes partner poaching. 🏹

PwC has some big plans. 

They want to quadruple the size of their partner force in the US. 

In a time when talent is short and markets are competitive, they want to go to their next door neighbors, EY. 

EY is in the middle of a tumultuous decision to split the company up, which has played brilliantly in PwC's favour. 

Turmoil in a Big 4 means that there are 3 others waiting to strike.

A few partners have already been hired 'here and there', according to HR staff at PwC, but it looks like the rest is yet to come.

And it looks like they have their target set.

4 - Cash-strapped companies face a rickety future. 😅

Banks across Europe are bolting up the lending desks as Eurozone bank lending fell for the first time since 2014. 

Rising rates and volatile markets are the perfect storm for lenders to cut back on risk, which means that it'll be harder for cash-strapped businesses to fuel their growth with cheap money. 

The short term economic impact is gonna have a universal shock, but the longer term prospect is what people are scared about. 

Looks like no more VC lollipops for a while. 

5 - OPEC preps to play around with oil output. 🛢️

OPEC has both eyes on oil sanctions that are going to be coming into place on Russia later this week. 

They're expected to keep oil production unchanged, with a small production cut on the cards. 

OPEC has been trying to cut production now and then, but they've faced some pretty harsh pushbacks from the US along with virtually everyone else. 

Oil prices have cooled since the start of the year, but there's still a lot of uncertainty in the air. 

This is 2022. Life moves in the fast lane. 🚀

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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