Happy morning, Munchers! 🙏

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, investors remained unimpressed with Google's AI, Adani lied to all of us, and Credit Suisse's execs got ready for a big boost to their bank accounts. 🔥

Let’s dive in.

What’s hot, what’s not?

Market Commentary

• The US is done with it's days of gas guzzling. Gas use data came in for 2022 and America used 6% less than they did in pre-COVID days. Looks like the world's largest oil market is starting to recede.

• Jay Powell still thinks that we can raise rates higher, and keep them there for longer. A strong labour market or persistent inflation could force the Fed's hand to keep tightening things up. Let's pray for the people that want to buy houses.

• Both American and European markets dipped after some ongoing concerns about profits being damp this season.

Story Roundup

1 - Google loves AI. But it's investors don't. 📉

Just when you thought the gloom and doom was over for Big Tech - think again.

Google held a blockbuster AI event yesterday, showcasing their new AI chatbot called "Bard".

It was meant to shake things up and give markets renewed confidence that GPT is in fact not the Google killer.

But during the presentation, shares slid almost 10% - which means that investors expected more from Sundar Pichai and co.

The big trend now seems to be AI-powered search.

Instead of outputting a bunch of links and text, imagine if your search engine gave you exactly what you were looking for, in a sentence or two.

That's where the money (apparently) seems to be, and that is where Google is not.

You know who is there? Microsoft.

Bing will now be able to give "more conversational" answers, although there's no full unleashing of the GPT demon... yet.

Turns out there's a bunch of catching up to do... 🤔

2 - Adani faces a billion-dollar margin call. 📞

Remember how much markets were praising Adani for having $2 billion lying around to pay off loans?

Turns out that wasn't actually the case.

Adani baba had to post that money because he was faced with a margin call on the loan.

This would have happened because a classic Adani tactic is to pledge your own shares as collateral for loans.

When the value of your shares decreases though, problems start to emerge (because your collateral isn't worth what it used to be).

So the loan sharks are behind Adani ji.

He's come full circle. 🦈

3 - Credit Suisse execs get ready for a $400mn payout. 💸

Credit Suisse's board has a blockbuster plan to restore the fortunes of the scandal-hit bank.

Top CS execs will get to share a $400mn bonus pool if they pull off one of the most radical restructurings in the finance world's history - after missing out on bonuses this year due to horiffic performance.

Analysts estimate total losses this year to hit over 8 billion dollars and CS is also giving 9k of it's 52k employees the axe.

Managers are now gonna need to hit a group return on equity of 6% of 2025. That's about it.

Looks solid. 💴💵💶💷

4 - Uber extends it's post-lockdown hot streak. 🥵

Uber just dropped their 2022 numbers, and the data is mind-blowing.

In Q4 of last year, they had over 2 billion rides completed - that's more than 1 million an hour.

Total revenue beat analyst expectations by a slim margin, sitting at $8.6bn.

The driver shortages that hampered it's COVID recovery are now long-gone, and there is now a record high of 5.4 million drivers on the app.

Over 100 million people used their other mobility services - which includes dumb stuff like scooters.

The only red that could be spotted was in their freight business - which is pretty nascent, but still not great to see.

Only time can heal these wounds... 🤩

5 - UK regulators want to chop up Microsoft's business. ✂️

The UK's competition regulator sees no future in the $75bn marriage of Microsoft and Activision.

This blockbuster acquisition could apparently result in "higher prices, fewer choices, and less innovation" for Brtish gamers (not that anyone cares).

If Microsoft wants the deal to go through, they will have to sell Call of Duty - which has generated over $30bn in lifetime revenues.

But this isn't the only battle they're having - Microsoft is facing tons of regulatory scrutiny in Brussels and America.

If it goes through, this will be their biggest-ever dedal and make them the 3rd largest gaming company in the world.

Crazy how we're basing decisions around gamers... 💀

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