The week that was
Hello Everyone! We hope you had a great week. It appears even the high and mighty are not immune to identity and data theft fears. The French President, Emmanuel Macron, refused a Kremlin request that he take a Russian COVID-19 test when he arrived to see President Vladimir Putin this week, to prevent Russia from getting hold of Macron's DNA. The result was a meeting that looked like this
Better safe than cloned eh? With that, let’s dive into the things that mattered this week.
Inflationary concerns are all the rage. It has turned everyone into an economist and has left actual economists scratching their heads. Not without reason. The U.S. Consumer prices surged more than expected in January causing the Consumer Price Index(CPI) to touch 7.5%, a 4 decade high (economists were expecting 7.2%). The transitory (NOT) inflation gauge rose 0.6% in January, a fall out from increased costs across food, electricity, and housing. We have gone into the reasons and its impact in our earlier editions. Lets take a look how things are shaping up now.
Oil has hit new multi year highs and is inching closer to the $100 mark. But there might be good news on the horizon with US officials believing a deal with Iran is close which will bring new oil supply and cool prices. Global shipping giant Maersk expects the supply bottlenecks to ease up in the second half of 2022 which will reduce the price of almost everything. Even Apple’s largest supplier is guiding for easing of component shortages. On a downbeat note, Chicken and food prices continue to be high. Fed is expected to start raising rates with some Hawks calling for a full 1% hike by July. That will be something. With Omicron easing (fingers crossed on new variants), labour force will come back to work helping ease pressures on supply chains. High base effect will also kick in from the 2nd half. With all the above factors there’s no way but prices to go down right?
Asia and India’s richest Man : Some would say that India’s opposition leaders have a fixation on certain businessmen…err AA (Adani-Ambani). Cut to this week and Gautam Adani overtook his fellow Gujarati to become the richest man this side of the world. Cue Gujaratis again pointing out that the two most powerful people and richest people in India are Gujjus. We get it guys! Gautam Adani is now worth close to 90 Billion with the latest trigger being the IPO of his Oil trading company Adani Wilmar whose market cap hit Rs. 50,000 crore. Now Adani has been in global news for the giant Carmichael Coal mine which has been facing massive protests down under. However, he has been transforming his business with increasing investments in the renewable energy space. In barely three years, Adani has also gained control of seven airports and almost a quarter of India’s air traffic. His group now owns the country’s largest airport operator, power generator and city gas retailer attracting barbs from politicians. If you would have invested money in his companies 3 years back, your investment would have grown multiple times! Interesting trivia: he is a college dropout who was once kidnapped and released on a ransom of 2 million dollars and also escaped the 2008 terrorist attack hiding in the basement of the Taj Mahal hotel.
The Crocodile of Wall Street: The Con- Laundering 119,754 Bitcoin worth a staggering $4.5 billion. The sum linked to the hack of Bitfinex, a virtual currency exchange whose systems were breached by hackers nearly six years ago.
The Con Artists-
Ilya “Dutch” Lichtenstein and Heather “Razzlekhan” Morgan were arrested by federal law enforcement officials in New York City and accused of making themselves insanely rich by laundering a cache of stolen Bitcoin that is today worth about $4.5 billion. As incredible as the scale of the heist is, what makes it even more incredible is the life the couple was leading. Heather Morgan called herself Razzlekhan and The Crocodile of Wall Street among other psuedonyms and has a bunch of rap videos showing off her lifestyle. Ilya was the “quiet mysterious” one and had a more conservative style. We shouldn’t suffer alone, here’s her video “Versace Bedouin”.
Oscar Nominations: In the Academy Award noms announced this week, the western ‘Power of the Dog’ and the adaptation of the sci-fi epic ‘Dune’ led with the most nominations as widely expected. Musical ‘West Side Story’ and the coming of age drama ‘Belfast’ were the other big nominees. Director and legend Steven Spielberg earned his 8th nomination. Lady Gaga was one of the big snubs. Surprisingly, the year’s big movie ‘Spider Man: No way home’ didn’t land the best picture or any of the big nods. See the nominees here. India has a representative after a while with the documentary ‘Writing with Fire’ which chronicles the story of the all Dalit women run newspaper / digital news outlet ‘Khabar Lahariya’ nominated in the documentary category.
Markets this week
After another volatile week, the large-cap indexes ended the week lower, while the mid cap and small cap indexes were slightly better. Nasdaq fared the worst and ended the week down roughly 15% from its recent peak, still in correction territory. Ukraine tensions and Higher than expected inflation kept the markets on the edge.
India's Sensex and Nifty posted weekly losses, dragged by decline in information technology, realty and FMCG stocks. Metals was the only index which ended in green. The portfolios bled with small caps witnessing a larger fall of 4.50%. Inflation is weighing on earnings with profits declining across a large number of companies. High oil prices are also having a negative impact on the Indian markets.
What are we watching this week
Badhai Do: Quirky characters set in small north Indian towns has become quite formulaic, even so, this dramedy about two gay people caught in a heterosexual marriage does manage to hold its own. The ever-reliable Rajkumar Rao and made-for such roles Bhumi Pednekar have both given solid performances. The rest of the cast is made up of actors who seem to be in all north Indian hinterland movies – Seema Pahwa and Sheeba Chaddha to name a couple. Should be a decent watch. Read the review here.
Reacher: The 26 book Hit Book series by Lee Child has found its way to streaming after a ho hum outing on the big screen led by Tom Cruise. For one the fans of the books were not too happy with the casting as Jack Reacher is a hulk of a man and has a brooding nature. The TV series is a more faithful adaptation with the lead character a man of few words, with a physique like Arnold Schwarzenegger and not afraid to use his large hands to good effect. Essentially a hark back to the good old days of Arnold and Stallone’s action movies. The reviews are good. On Amazon Prime.