Good morning, Munchers!

Happy Friday. Hope you have a lovely weekend. Enjoy the parties. 🙏

And as always, here is your daily dose of the news that matters - from Wall Street to Dalal Street, in 4 minutes and 52 seconds.

Let’s dive in.

What’s hot, what’s not?

Market Commentary

• US stocks slid late in the session as fears of an outsized rate hike intensified.

• There is now a 25% chance that we see a 100bp hike at the next Fed meeting.

• Risk-on sectors like IT and Pharma dragged Indian indices about 0.5-1%.

Story Roundup

1 - Ethereum completes it's long-awaited "Merge". 💸

The Ethereum blockchain just moved from a proof-of-work system to a proof-of-stake system.

This marks an incredible fundamental turning point for Eth - the network will now become- 99% less energy intensive- deflationary in nature - save 0.2% of the world's electricity

The Merge wasn't the bullish catalyst that all ETH holders were hoping for - and the crypto is down about 10.4%, suffering heavily against a dark macro environment.

Only one question remains - wen moon?

2 - US home mortgage rates pass 6% for the first time since 2008. 📈

Homebuyers are being squeezed yet again as the average mortgage rate now sits at 6%.

This was a level we only last touched in 2008.

These borrowing costs have doubled since January - marking the steepest increase in rates in over half a century.

Mortgage rate hikes go up in hand with the Fed's aggressive stance on inflation - and since it's now more expensive to own a home, the sales volume of homes falls through.

Consumer sentiment has deteriorated rapidly - and there's still room to fall.

Seatbelts in. 🏎️

3 - Adobe scoops up Figma for a cool $20 billion. 🔥

Adobe agreed to buy creative tools firm Figma for a cheeky $20 billion.

Figma is the go-to tool for every software dev/designer - letting you create beautiful slide decks, websites, apps, and everything in between.

Figma added $400m in ARR over 2022 - and Adobe thinks that it's a fair price to pay for a company this big.

Adobe shares were down 12% after the announcement.

New era. ⏳

4 - Patagonia's founder gives back in a big way. 🌲

"Earth is now our only shareholder."

Patagonia's billionaire founder has decided to hand all profits of the company to fighting climate issues.

He's transferred all of his family's ownership to a private trust - this trust will provide about $100m to charities that combat climate change.

They want to stop extracting stuff from Earth to create shareholder value - but instead want to protect the source of all wealth creation - the planet.

Godspeed. 🚀

5 - US weekly jobless claims are the lowest since May. 📉

The jobs market is very, very resilient.

New applications for unemployment benefits just slid to their lowest in 3.5 months.

This figure came in below economist expectations and highlights the strength of the labour market - weekly claims have been declining over the last 9 weeks or so.

Confusing times. 🤔

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