Happy morning, Munchers!

Monday's in. Grab your coffee, and let's go. 🚀

Here is your daily dose of the news that matters, from Wall Street to Dalal Street - in 4 minutes and 32 seconds.

Let’s dive in.

What’s hot, what’s not?

Market Commentary

• Stocks on Friday took a turn for the worse. Indian, European and American indices all closed in the red. 📉

• This stall came after some comments from a US Fed official - who said that more aggression with rate hikes might be needed.

• The US is hosting a trip for it's central bankers. It's called the Jackson Hole Economic Symposium and comments from there could decide the fate of markets for the short term.

Story Roundup

1 - Russia's checkmated Europe over gas supplies. ♟️

It's been a long game of chicken - but Russia is finally cutting gas supplies to Europe.

The Nord Stream 1 pipeline - which takes care of ~40% of Europe's gas needs - is gonna have supply cut from August 28 to 1 September - under the guise of maintenance.

If supply is restored - it will be at 20% of the pipeline's capacity.

If not - Europe has a big, big energy crisis on it's hands.

Fingers crossed. 🤞

2 - Chinese cities feel the summer heat. 🔥

It's getting hot in here. By here, I mean the Earth.

And economists believe a severe heatwave in China could put a cap on economic growth.

Temperatures rose past 40 degrees Celsius in the South-West of the country. This caused - - massive demand for air conditioning- a dry-up of reservoirs (this region is reliant on dams for a lot of electricity)- power cuts all across (not enough electricity!)

The government's going into energy-saving mode.

Red hot. 🌶️

3 - Mortgage lenders start to slip into hot water. 🥵

The mortgage industry is seeing it's lenders slowly go bust.

A sudden spike in lending rates has gotten analysts to question what's going on. A lot of them predict this wave of failures to be the worst since the 2008 financial crisis.

US mortgage markets have completely slowed down - loan application volumes are down 70% from a year ago.

Once interest rates started going up, lending volumes contracted.

And that's what's causing this pain. 🙏

4 - India confirms that it's got enough wheat to feed it's billions. 🌾

The Indian government has no plans to import more wheat.

They confirmed that India has enough stock to meet domestic requirements, and then some mroe.

Wheat reserves in India have declined to their lowest levels in 14 years.

In addition, wheat inflation adds another 12% to the bill.

Looks like they've weathered a heat-wave pretty well - one that destroyed a lot of crop yield and rendered farmers crops worthless.

Life's alright for now.

5 - Dubai's gonna kick off it's luxury property ballgame. 🏠

Demand for luxury property in Dubai is going 🆙.

The desert country's proving itself as a worthy hub for people with big pockets - and real estate developers see this.

Projects that were left abandoned but in decent condition are being started up again.

Dubai's loosened itself up to the world quite a bit - and has opened it's doors to everyone under the sun - from crypto millionaires, to wealthy Russians fleeing the war, to anyone with pockets infinitely deep.

Real estate transactions in Dubai soared 35% in June compared to a year before.

Godspeed. 💸

Happy Monday guys. Hope it's a great day for you and a good start to the week.

Hope you enjoyed this issue of the Market Munch. If you have any feedback, positive or negative, hit my line at [email protected] or +971 50 708 8469.

Cheers,A