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, Amazon made a retreat from the real world, crypto’s favorite bank headed to heaven, and Apple set some roots down in India. 🔥

Let’s dive in.

What’s hot, what’s not?

Market Commentary

• Citibank sent all it’s big-ticket clients an email about how Russia might “weaponise metals”. Russia is one of the world’s biggest suppliers of palladium and aluminum, and any export cuts on their part will lead to a lot of turmoil in metal markets.

• Japan’s having a few problems with their growth rates, and their target for 2023 GDP was revised down to 0.1%. Prime example of why an ageing population is a pretty scary thing!

• As always, markets remained super choppy. Seatbelts in, nice and tight.

Story Roundup

1 - Amazon stops GOing offline. 🛒

Remember when Amazon launched their Amazon GO stores?

We were all awestruck at the “future of shopping”.

You just walk in, grab what you need, and walk right back out without spending a second at a cash register.

Amazon thought it was revolutionary, and they had plans to open 1,000 new stores by 2023.

Well, it is 2023, and they just started closing down GO stores.

Amazon is definitely GOing, they’re just going back online.

Last year the closed 68 physical stores, Amazon Books, Amazon Fresh, Amazon 4-Star - you name it.

They’re yet to find the secret formula for brick and mortar success - and time will tell where Bezos baba goes. 🧱

2 - Crypto’s big bankers shut their business down. 🤦🏻

Silvergate is finally heading toward the pearly gates. Officially bankrupt.

They’re the latest domino in the FTX fiasco, and there is one massive takeaway from the entire saga.

What goes up fast, comes down even faster.

Silvergate’s growth seemed exponential and endless.

Millions of dollars were handed out as bonuses. Billions of dollars flowed into their coffers. Trillions of dollars changed hands on their network.

The company's share price 25Xed in 2 years.

And then, the music stopped.

2022's crypto winter chilled the big players, and they sought to keep their money tightly with them.

So they started to withdraw their money from Silvergate.

Clients were knocking on doors and asking for their bucks back.

And it became a classic case of a bank run.

Customers withdrew money because they were worried that Silvergate might go under - but that only added more fuel to the fire.

And boom - crypto’s favorite bank is now bankrupt. 🔥

3 - Apple reshuffles management for an Indian push. 🚀

India might become Apple's crown jewel.

For decades now, the tech bros in Silicon Valley have been unable to crack the Indian smartphone market.

But California’s kombucha-guzzling tech bros are seeing the promise in India, and they’re packing their beanbags up and hopping on an airplane.

Apple is gonna be specializing a lot and shifting their center of manufacturing power from China to India.

JP Morgan is betting that Apple is gonna make 5% of all iPhones in Hindustan by this year, with a staggering 25% shift to Indian manufacturing by 2025.

Direct impact on the market will be -
- Lots of new jobs
- Lots of new production spend
- Lots of confidence in India as a manufacturing hub
- An iPhone that's a little bit cheaper ;)

Moon it is. 🌚

4 - Corporate politics put EY’s split on hold. ✂️

EY had planned to spend big to split it’s biz up.

They had set aside $2.5 billion to fund an acquisition spree for their consulting arm.

But all of that has been put on hold because of a fierce dispute between their tax partners.

The war is between audit and consulting - the consulting guys want the tax team on their side, and vice versa.

Each day that this battle goes on is a day that drags on growth.

Pricey stuff. 🫰🏼

5 - A secretive AI startup scoops up $100 million. 🤔

An AI startup called Humane just raised $100 million more - and it is SHROUDED in mystery.

The company was founded by ex-Apple employees and they started buzzing around after poaching dozens of other Silicon Valley veterans.

They’ve scooped up $230 million in the last 5 years, without shipping a single product.

I did some digging, and they’ve filed a patent for a “body-worn device” that uses a “laser projection system” instead of a display — essentially projected AR glasses that can identify objects in the real world and apply digital imagery to them.

Literally the matrix. 🤩

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 ⚡