Happy morning, Munchers!

Here is your daily dose of the news that matters, from Wall Street to Dalal Street - in 5 minutes and 3 seconds.

Let’s dive in.

What’s hot, what’s not?

Market Commentary 🎙️

• All eyes in America are peeled for their CPI numbers today. Treasuries and US stocks slipped slightly but traded in a very tight range.

• Economists expect that we are beyond peak inflation - with target for this release to be at 8.7% - slightly under last month's 9.1%.

• Asian stocks were generally dragged lower after poor results from a few key companies. Warnings of slowing demand spread throughout the entire market.

Story Roundup

1 - Crypto slump washes Coinbase's profits away. 💸

Coinbase reported their earnings yesterday, and outlook was very dismal.

They racked up a loss of $1.1bn (stunning compared with the $1.6bn profit this time last year).

Signs of a little desperation were seen as they reassured Wall Street about their strength to come out strong through this crypto winter. 

Their CFO mentioned a few interesting things - - no credit losses so far.- most long-term debt taken out at cheap interest rates- $6.2bn of available cash would enable them to keep investing through the downturn.

The stock is down some 16%. Their presentation is here. 

Hard times. 🔥

2 - Taiwan forces it's biggest chipmaker to unwind an $800m investment in China. 😥

Taiwanese national security has raised a few eyebrows about a deal that just went through.

Foxconn - well-known as the maker of Apple products - is headquartered in Taiwan.

They recently invested just over $800m into a small Chinese company. 

The government doesn't like this.

Taiwan is seeking to align itself more closely with the USA amid all the threats that they've been receiving from Beijing. 

The world's just a big chess board. 🤷

3 - Oil-hungry India guzzles up a large trade deficit with the UAE. 🛢️

India's trade gap with the UAE surged 4x in the last month - right after the introduction of a new trade corridor between both countries. 

Indian exports to the UAE sit at about $5.4bn and imports sit at $9.3bn - mainly spiking because of elevated demand for oil.

India is projected to be the most populous country in the world by next year - and all those people are gonna be using a LOT of energy.

A trade gap this wide doesn't immediately seem to elicit words of caution, as India isn't 'reliant' per se on the UAE. 

I'm an Indian who's living in the UAE, surely I'm an export too. 🤩

4 - Chinese inflation surges to the highest in 2 years. 📈

China's consumer price index rose to 2.7% (still a stunning number) for the month of July.

Weak consumer demand kept most prices in check, however a 20% surge in the price of pork (which the Chinese eat a lot of) 

Inflation in China has generally been pretty subdued - mainly because of their Zero-COVID policy. 

Whenever an outbreak comes up, all business and day-to-day life shuts down. This has hampered consumer and business spending - which is why China is lagging global economies in inflation numbers. 

5 - Chip stocks rattled by poor earnings from Micron. 🔥

Micron - one of the biggest American semiconductor producers - warned that "revenue may come in on the low end" of their guidance for the fourth quarter.

This rattled other chip stocks and the market as a whole - which led to downward pressure on US indices.

Shipments are expected to drop off in the first quarter of 2023 and they expect negative free-cash-flow for 1Q23 too.

This negative FCF expectation seems to be as a result of ongoing capex - which is difficult for them to curb in the short-term. 

Quite a crunch. 🍟

Interesting times. 😂

Happy Wednesday guys. Make sure to tell the Starbucks worker to have a good day.

Any feedback is open - positive or negative. Hit my line at [email protected] or https://www.linkedin.com/in/aryaansh/.

Godspeed. 🙏