Happy morning, Munchers!

Here is your daily dose of the news that matters, from Wall Street to Dalal Street - in 4 minutes and 35 seconds.

Let’s dive in.

What’s hot, what’s not

Market Commentary

• Oil slipped as recession fears shook commodity markets up a little. Lowest level since the start of February.🛢️

• US jobless claims rose to 260,000 - in line with general market expectations. 😓

• Job market looks to be very tight and large-scale layoffs generally aren't being seen. Good sign. ✅

Story Roundup

1 - BofE bumps up their rates by 50 bips. 🍵

The Bank of England raised their benchmark interest rate by the largest they have in almost 3 decades.

They also came with a grave warning - the UK could fall into a "lengthy recession" this year, with British inflation reaching up to 15%.

The UK is currently dealing with all sorts of macro headwinds -

• Inflation at 40-year highs of 9.4%

• A political meltdown (Ikea has better cabinets)

• Consumer confidence crumbling and food prices through the roof

Tough times are on the way. 🤷

2 - Coinbase gains some comeback confidence. 📈

Blackrock and Coinbase inked a deal yesterday that will let Blackrock institutional clients seamless access to digital asset markets.

Blackrock is the biggest money manager in the world - running about $10 trillion at one point - so this is big news.

It's a tie-up that's giving some salvation to Coinbase shareholders - who've seen the stock slip over 80% from it's peaks.

It also shows some confidence in the crypto space from the "smart money" - regardless of all the turbulence experienced this year.

3 - China fires some missiles around Taiwan after Pelosi dips. 😨

Apparently the PLA (Chinese Army) fired about 11 missiles into waters around Taiwan - with the goal of "punishing Taiwan" for hosting Nancy Pelosi.

Taiwan's defense ministry was pissed - they called it an "irrational action destroying regional peace".

What's more is that some of the missiles also landed in Japan's territory - angering them too.

Japan's defense ministry said it best - "significant escalation".

4 - US jobless claims hit a six-month high as labor demand diminishes. 👋

The number of people that applied for unemployment benefits hit a fresh six-month high - showing that a very tight labour market may have some wiggle room.

There were 260,000 claims - which hit expectations on the head.

Economists at Oxford think that we'll see it "drift" at this level for a while - which is typical as labour markets cool, so it shouldn't be too big of a problem.

Layoffs have hit retail, tech and digital businesses the hardest - especially the ones that grew at astronomic rates during the pandemic induced-boom, and stumbled during a tighter macro environment.

5 - Elon Musk not buying Twitter is "implausible" according to them. 🗣️

Twitter just accused the richest guy in the world of creating "a new set of excuses" to avoid buying them.

This comes after they sued him last month to forcible make the deal go through, and he filed a countersuit to block the former.

Mr. Musk is saying that the reason he isn't going ahead with the purchase is that Twitter breached the agreement themselves - and that they have double the number of bots that they said.

Twitter called these estimates "factually inaccurate, legally insufficient, and commercially relevant."😬

Aaaand that’s a wrap.

Happy day guys.

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