Luxury group Hermès increased sales by 27.5% in the first half of the year. This is not great news for the poor. Not only can they not afford to buy Birkin bags but every bag that is bought increases the likelihood of interest rates going up, which will affect the poor disproportionately. If you pronounced Hermès with a hard ‘H’, I’m sorry to say but you are probably in this group.

The lowdown

• 🙅‍♀️ More controversy at Twitter as new ‘X’ logo receives complaints from neighbors and Kanye West is reinstated to the platform.

• 💉 AstraZeneca beats Q2 profit and sales expectations with strong cancer drug sales as vaccine sales dry up.

• 👜 Luxury group Hermès defies industry wide slowdown with first half sales up 27.5%.

Flex your finance muscle 💪

Soft landing

It is looking increasingly likely that the Fed may thread the needle and orchestrate a “soft landing” – a scenario where the economy slows down to avoid overheating, but doesn't enter a recession. In other words, a soft landing is achieved when economic growth slows, inflation cools down, but a full-blown economic downturn or recession is avoided.

Achieving a soft landing requires precise calibration of monetary policy, which is kind of impossible. The accepted wisdom is that a change in interest rates takes 12-18 months to have its full impact on the economy and so the Fed is forced to make further decisions before the impacts of previous decisions have been fully felt – very hard. Economists increasingly believe that the Fed may have managed it though($), which is good news for everyone.

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Featured story

Walmart increases its stake in Flipkart

Walmart has purchased NY based hedge fund Tiger Global’s remaining stake in Indian ecommerce company Flipkart for $1.4 billion. Tiger Global has made a gain of $3.5 billion from its initial investment of $1.2 billion in Flipkart.

The sale values Flipkart at $35 billion. The company had been valued at $37.6 billion in a 2021 funding round, but this was prior to the spin out of PhonePe.

Walmart initially purchased a 77% stake in Flipkart for $16 billion in 2018 and held a 72% stake as of 2022. Prior to the sale, Tiger Global held a 4% stake in Flipkart and appears to have made a gain of $3.5 billion from its initial investment of $1.2 billion. With Flipkart in the red, it’s good to see that at least someone is making money.

The content we're consuming today

• Bloomberg: Influencers Built Up This Wellness Startup—Until They Started Getting Sick ($).

• FT: Swifties are a symptom of years of low interest rates ($).

• Bond Vigilantes: Inflation: Not always and everywhere a bad thing.

• Stop your personal information being stolen and sold with Aura. (Sponsor)

Off-balance sheet items

• Someone has made Instagram’s terms of service into a lullaby. Even the name of the website is hilarious – zzzuckerberg.com 

The bottom line