🐦 The Tweet That Shook $2.5 Trillion in 7 Minutes

Happy Tuesday, folks! Hope you had a calm cup of chai this morning — because the markets clearly did not. Between Trump’s tariff tornado, a tweet that shook Wall Street, and Coffee Day’s debt drip, global finance felt like it accidentally sipped on a triple espresso.

India’s stock market tripped harder than your cousin’s flip-flops on Goa sands, losing over ₹20 lakh crore in wealth before lunchtime. Meanwhile, Apple’s jumping ship from China to India (finally!), edtech is getting spicy, and fintech’s having its moment.

Fasten your seatbelts, today’s cup is overfilled and overflowing — let’s pour it all out

🫖 Chai Shots

• 🍵 Sensex Sinks, Nifty Nosedives: Indian equity markets had their worst session in 10 months. The Sensex plunged over 2,200 points, and Nifty dropped below the 22,200 mark, wiping out ₹20 lakh crore in investor wealth. The steep fall was triggered by global panic over Trump's sweeping tariffs and fears of a trade war spiraling into recession. (More in the Big Brew 👇)

• 📉 Coffee Day’s Bitter Brew: Coffee Day Enterprises, the parent chain of Cafe Coffee Day, is drowning in debt, defaulting on ₹425 crore worth of loans and interest repayments. Legal battles are brewing, loan recall notices have flown in, and the company hasn't recognized any interest since April 2021. Once a café empire, it’s now chasing over ₹3,500 crore allegedly diverted into the founder's personal firm.

• 🚫 A Tweet That Broke the Market: A fake post claiming Trump was planning a 90-day tariff pause sparked a $2.5 trillion spike in US stocks — all in just 7 minutes. The rumor was shared by a verified X account, picked up by major outlets, and only later denied by the White House. Moral of the story? Don’t believe everything on the bird app.

• 📲 Apple’s India Pivot: To dodge steep US tariffs on Chinese imports, Apple is rerouting iPhone shipments from India to the US. With China facing a 54% duty and India at 26%, Cupertino could save $300 per device — and India may end up fulfilling half of US iPhone demand this year.

• 🎧 boAt floats towards IPO waters: Imagine Marketing, the parent company of audio and wearables brand boAt, has quietly filed for its IPO again via the confidential route. After pulling back its earlier ₹2,000 crore IPO in 2022, the company is back with improved financials and a shiny new smartwatch with built-in maps.

📈 Market Masala

• 💸 Markets in Mayhem: The Sensex closed at 73,137, down 2,227 points (2.95%), while Nifty ended 742 points lower at 22,161 (3.24%). Morning mayhem saw Nifty dive 5% before recovering slightly.

• 🥶 Investor Wealth Vanishes: Over ₹20 lakh crore of market cap was wiped out in seconds, as global jitters over Trump’s tariff war rattled even the strongest hands. FPIs sold off ₹9,041 crore worth of shares, while DIIs tried to counter with ₹12,122 crore in purchases.

• 🔻 Sectoral Slaughter: Every Nifty sector ended in the red. Metal stocks got hammered the hardest, plunging 6.75%, followed by Realty (down 5.6%), and Autos (-3.78%). Mid and smallcaps also underperformed, down more than 3.5%.

• 📉 Biggest Losers: Trent (-14.7%), Tata Steel (-7.26%), JSW Steel (-7.53%), L&T (-5.31%), Hindalco (-5.92%), and Shriram Finance took heavy blows. Zomato and Hindustan Unilever were rare gainers.

• 📉 Rupee Retreats and Commodities Drop: The rupee weakened, opening 30 paise lower at ₹85.74 against the dollar. Oil fell below $61, and gold prices slid by ₹1,550 in Delhi markets. The panic selling extended even to supposed safe havens.

🌍 Global Masala

• 🌪️ World in Whiplash: Trump’s tariff storm rattled every major market. Japan’s Nikkei dropped 7.83%, Taiwan tumbled 9.7%, and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng cratered 13.22% — its worst in nearly 30 years. European markets didn’t fare better, with Germany’s DAX and UK’s FTSE down sharply.

• 💼 Trump Threatens More Tariffs: POTUS warned China of an extra 50% tariff if it doesn't back off its own retaliatory measures. He also slammed the door on trade talks, calling this economic medicine necessary, even as panic ripples through markets.

• 📊 VIX Screams Volatility: Wall Street's fear gauge, the VIX, spiked to its highest since the pandemic. US markets were a seesaw of panic and hope — tanking on tariffs, then briefly soaring on fake news, only to crash again once reality hit.

☕📉 The Big Brew: How a Fake Tweet & Trump’s Tariff Tantrum Wiped Out $2.4 Trillion

Markets lost their collective chill on Monday, swinging harder than a desi wedding sangeet — all thanks to a rogue tweet and some serious tariff turbulence. Here’s the masala:

• 🐦 A Tweet That Shook Wall Street: An obscure X account posted that Trump might pause tariffs for 90 days (excluding China). Despite zero confirmation, major media picked it up, and traders believed it.

• 📈 Stock Surge Madness: Within 30 minutes, the S&P 500 shot up 8.5%, adding a wild $2.4 trillion to the market cap. NYSE traders were literally clapping.

• ⛔ Denial = Meltdown: The White House shut down the rumor. The tweet got deleted. Stocks tanked again. The Dow ended 349 points lower, and the fear gauge (VIX) hit COVID-era highs.

• 💣 Trump Escalates: Instead of dialing things down, Trump threatened another 50% tariff on China if it didn’t remove its retaliatory 34% hike. He said talks with China were off the table, but others were welcome to negotiate.

• 🌎 Markets Around the World Caught the Flu:

  • Hong Kong’s Hang Seng crashed 13.2% (worst since 1997)

  • Japan’s Nikkei dropped 7.8%

  • Europe? Equally bruised — Germany, France, UK, you name it.

🤔 What does this mean?
Markets are behaving like they're on triple shots of espresso. Investors are desperate for policy clarity, but with mixed messages and threats flying, every headline is moving mountains — real or fake. Until that settles, expect chaos in the charts.

🚀 Startup Scoop

• 🎓 SigIQ.ai Raises $9.5M: This Berkeley + Gurugram edtech startup is building an AI tutor that can literally ace your exams. With products like PadhAI for UPSC and EverTutor for GRE, they’re backed by Duolingo, The House Fund, and Peak XV. Funds will go towards scaling Indian language learning and refining their AI brainpower.

• 🛵 Rapido Dives Into Fintech: After food delivery, Rapido’s cooking up a fintech play. The ride-hailing startup is planning a new subsidiary focused on lending and financial services for gig workers — a timely pivot as legal roadblocks threaten its bike-taxi biz in Karnataka and beyond.

• 💰 Easebuzz Lands ₹257 Cr: Pune-based Easebuzz raised $30M in Series A to boost its SaaS payment stack and dive into UPI, QR payments, and POS devices. With RBI’s nod for payment aggregation, the fintech plans to tap international markets too.

• 💳 Revolut Gets RBI Greenlight: UK’s Revolut can now launch mobile wallets and UPI in India, expanding from its forex roots into domestic digital payments. It’s eyeing a slice of India’s massive UPI market — currently dominated by PhonePe, GPay, and Paytm.

🤓 Chai Break Trivia

🛗 Did you know that India’s first elevator was installed in 1892 — in the Raj Bhavan of Kolkata?
Back then, it was considered such a novelty that people dressed in their finest clothes just to take a ride in it!

🔮 What’s Brewing Next?

• 🏦 April 17: FinMin meets PSU bank heads to review performance, targets for FY26, and financial inclusion schemes.

🫶 That’s a wrap, folks!

If you survived today’s edition without checking your stock portfolio (or crying into it), congrats — you’re stronger than us 🫠

The tariff drama is just getting started, and markets are watching every Trump tweet like it’s the last season of Scam 1992. We’ll be back tomorrow with more headlines, hot takes, and maybe even a sliver of optimism. Until then, stay caffeinated and don’t believe everything on X!

P.S. If you liked today’s brew, forward it to your squad 🫶