Sweater weather is scorching food security

Good morning! 10:39 is a number that will be etched in sporting history for a long, long time. As per The Athletic, it marked the moment in the second quarter of the Lakers v. Nuggets game when LeBron James became the first player in NBA history to score 40,000 career points. Not just that, the match also saw James extend his record double-digit scoring streak to 1,205 games. GOAT for a reason. 👑

Soumya Gupta and Adarsh Singh also contributed to today’s edition.

The Market Signal* 

Stocks & Economy: Indian markets took the grim nuances in the GDP numbers of the third quarter of FY24 in their stride and indices set new highs last week. 

Soaring stock markets have swelled the wealth of India’s ultra rich, who numbered 13,263 in 2023, up from 12,495 the previous year. The cohort is expected to be 19,908 by 2028, says Knight Frank’s The Wealth Report 2024. 

Spending by these ultra high net worth individuals (UHNIs) is a key element of the India growth story that investors are so hopeful about. Knight Frank executive director Gulam Zia says the growth in the UHNIs’ wealth is nothing but a slice of their contribution to the economy. 

US markets ended the last week at record highs. Asian stocks were awash in green on Monday morning. The GIFT Nifty indicates a flat or positive opening for Indian equities.

TECHNOLOGY

Ready To Go App-less? 

Google delisted several top Indian apps last week for breaking in-app payment rules while affected entrepreneurs asked the government for protection from #EvilGoogle.

App developers worldwide have been fighting Google’s (and Apple’s) policy of forcing apps to use its billing system and charging a commission on all transactions. India’s antitrust regulator fined Google for it in 2022. India’s IT minister has backed developers now. 

No recourse: Those affected say it’s impossible to get around Google’s Play Store because Android dominates India. “If you download an app from anywhere else, it will show you a warning that it’s harmful, or suspicious,” Vinay Singhal, founder of delisted OTT app STAGE, told The Signal. “It’s extremely difficult to [get a user to] install an app from an APK [Android Package Kit].” 

No apps?: Several firms are trying to replace smartphones with AI-powered devices that don’t need apps. But, they’re not really app-less, yet. 

🎧 Google Play Store vs. Indian startups. Also in today’s edition: The link between the Red Sea and internet downtime. Tune in to The Signal Daily on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Google Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

ENERGY

Trade Is In Good Nick

What difference could a commodities trader make by switching jobs? Well, the butterfly effect might be felt even by national economies. 

Who?: Nick O’Kane, a former trader at Macquarie, is reportedly set to join Swiss trading house Mercuria. O’Kane’s trading skills helped him out-earn Macquarie chief Shemara Wikramanayake by a mile. His 2023 payout of $38 million topped JPMorgan chief Jamie Dimon’s and Goldman Sachs head honcho David Solomon’s.  

Game on: With O’Kane helping Mercuria’s ambitious expansion, competition between global energy traders such as Vitol, Gunvor, Glencore, and Trafigura is bound to intensify. Each of them has beefed up their war chest. Mercuria has $6 billion to play with. Global energy traders and producers, which were on the backfoot until last year, have refused to shrink business to prevent climate change. And they can fire up or switch off entire economies, as Pakistan found out last year.

FOOD SECURITY

Winds Of Change

Weather disturbances around India are converging to create a food security maelstrom against the backdrop of farmers’ ‘Dilli Chalo’ agitation.

Anticyclonic winds over the Bay of Bengal and a cyclonic circulation over Afghanistan and Iran—fuelled by the Arabian Sea’s south-westerly winds—triggered unseasonal thunderstorms and hail storms across India. The result was extensive damage to rabi crops.

Districts in Punjab and Haryana reported up to 70% damage to wheat and flattening of mustard crops too. Farmers in some areas have demanded a special girdawari (harvest inspection) and compensation.

Girdawaris were sanctioned by the Relief Commissioner Office in Uttar Pradesh after the state reported damage to wheat, mustard, pulses, cotton, and pea. Conditions in Gujarat are likely to damage onion and mango harvests. In February, inclement weather caused extensive damage to cotton, toor dal, and chana in Maharashtra.

GEOPOLITICS

Who Lives In A Cable Under The Sea?

No, not Spongebob Squarepants. We’re talking about the internet. If you’ve been struggling with internet speeds lately, blame the Houthi rebels and a pesky little bottleneck in the Red Sea. As the Iran-backed rebels attack commercial vessels crossing the Red Sea, abandoned and sinking ships are damaging undersea internet cables, disrupting services in India, Pakistan, and East Africa. Cable owners are unable to carry out repairs, especially with the threat of rebel attacks. 

Bottleneck: Local geography makes matters worse. Most undersea cables go from the Red Sea to the Arabian Sea via the narrow Bab al-Mandab Strait. Congestion and conflict have finally shaken internet companies out of their complacency; they’re trying to navigate rival Middle Eastern factions to find alternative routes for their undersea cables. 

INDUSTRY

All That Matters Is Cost

The world, which was afflicted by hot prices, may see China come to the rescue once again. Cheap exports from China are flooding western markets. 

Make at home: But unlike earlier, western nations are also building their own factories. Some of them are coming up within their territories while some others are coming up in friendly countries. 

While China can still make stuff cheaper than any advanced economy, what’s helping the latter reduce costs is migrant labour. An influx of low-skilled workers from Latin America, Africa, and Asia is supplying cheap labour to US and European farms and factories. It is allowing companies to postpone expensive automation even if hiring foreigners creates resentment in local populations. 

Young migrants are the easiest option for ageing countries. In Singapore, whose success story is built on its migrant population, the government is rolling out incentives for foreigners to stay back and continue working.

FYI

New kid on the block: Flipkart has launched its UPI service, Flipkart UPI, in partnership with Axis Bank; it will initially be available for Android users who register on the @fkaxis handle.

No place for losers: Zee Entertainment will sell off any assets that do not make a profit even as it aims for ₹2,000 crore (~$240 million) pre-tax gains in FY26, its CEO Punit Goenka told The Economic Times.

Ramping up: Farmers, who have been agitating on Delhi’s borders for better prices for their crops, have called for a countrywide rail roko or “stop the train” action on March 10. It is likely to lead to widespread disruption. 

Reward: Samsung, Dixon Technologies, and iPhone makers, Foxconn, Wistron, and Pegatron will collectively bag ₹4,400 crore of the government’s production-linked incentives for smartphone makers in FY23. 

Foes turned friends: Shehbaz Sharif was elected Pakistan prime minister for a second term nearly a month after an inconclusive general election. Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz party will lead a coalition government with the Pakistan People’s Party, whose co-chair Asif Ali Zardari is in the running for President.

Breaking the losing streak: Nikki Haley has won the Republican primary in Washington DC, breaking rival Donald Trump’s sweep in the Grand Old Party voting contests in the lead-up to the US elections.

New horizons?: Reuters reports that Japanese automaker Nissan is in talks to invest over $400 million in electric vehicle (EV) maker Fisker to get a foothold in the US EV pickup truck market.

THE DAILY DIGIT

$3.2 billion

The value of over 54,164 Bitcoin held by an unknown Bitcoin ‘whale’—an entity who hoards large amounts of cryptocurrency—dubbed Mr 100. The whale’s crypto wallet has been amassing Bitcoin since 2022, and speculation is that it belongs to an investment fund. (Decrypt)

FWIW

I’m back!: That’s the message from Clippy, the weird animated paper clip from MS Office. After being loved and derided in equal measure throughout its existence, the digital assistant is witnessing a cultural renaissance. It found a place in Microsoft’s ugly Christmas sweaters, has been rebooted by a software developer as an AI chatbot and is also the subject of an erotic e-book on Amazon titled, “Conquered by Clippy”. Maybe it’s best to let Clippy be where it belongs: in the past, pretending it never existed.

Feels right: Terms of endearment are as varied as the people they’re used for. Take the word “su sumercé” for example, meaning “your mercy”. The word has a colonial history and was used to shove down a hierarchy that no longer exists. And yet, the word is still popular as ever in Bogota. It’s used by people from all walks of life. Not all think that the word’s harmless though, with some pointing out that it’s just a facade to paper over actual class distinctions that still exist today. 🤷🏻

Evolution: Orcas are nature’s apex predators. They’re known for their great intelligence and social hunting skills but a new discovery off the coast of South Africa is changing our understanding of that. A single orca was observed to have hunted down a white shark. Not only is that a change in behaviour for the orcas, but marine biologists also believe it to be a sign of larger ecosystem changes happening in the ocean. Some even fear that the new orca’s behaviour can drive the white sharks to commercial fishing zones in the ocean, further endangering them.