If Elon Musk does indeed end up buying Twitter for $54.20 per share, as he's contractually obliged to and as he now claims to want to, the big winners will be Twitter's shareholders. There will also be a large number of losers, Axios' Felix Salmon writes.

Why it matters: Twitter is much more than just a share price — and the takeover bid isn't being financed solely from Musk's pocketbook.

The big picture: The losers, assuming that the deal will now go through, include Elon Musk himself; Tesla and SpaceX shareholders; Musk's lending banks; and, maybe, democracy itself.

• Musk is on the hook for $33.5 billion of the $44 billion that he has agreed to pay for Twitter, a company that is worth much less than $30 billion. He's a very rich man, with very rich friends, but it's still far from clear how he's going to be able to come up with the cash. (His attempt to borrow against his Tesla shares fell through.)
• Musk's wealth — which he'll need to tap, along with his billionaire friends — is mostly tied up in Tesla and SpaceX stock. Shareholders in those companies will be worried that Musk will be forced to sell a lot of stock to raise the cash — especially given that he'll owe capital gains tax on all stock sales.
• Musk's lenders, led by Morgan Stanley and Bank of America, have committed to lend Twitter $12.5 billion to fund the deal. Those loans, if they had to be sold today, would probably be worth much less than $12.5 billion. Losses on the $3 billion unsecured tranche alone could easily reach into the hundreds of millions of dollars, sources tell Axios' Michael Flaherty.
• Civil society is likely to be damaged, reports Axios' Scott Rosenberg, should Musk move ahead with his promise to enforce fewer rules about speech. Such an approach is wildly impractical and likely to unleash floods of spam, bullying, fraud and disinformation — which in turn is likely to immiserate thousands of remaining Twitter employees.

What's next: Elon Musk looks like he's about to find himself the owner of the world's most polarizing social network. Inevitably, that's going to distract him from running Tesla and SpaceX — just as Tesla, in particular, is facing serious competition in the electric vehicle space for the first time, and as Tesla stock is down some 40% from its highs.

The bottom line: Very few people, outside the ranks of Twitter shareholders, are happy about this development.

From the fall of 2020 through the spring of 2022, the Snap and Twitter share prices moved almost in lockstep with each other.

Why it matters: After Elon Musk revealed that he had bought a major stake in Twitter, the share prices diverged.

• Absent Musk's takeover bid, it's reasonable to assume that the Twitter share price would be much closer to Snap's $10.82 than it is to the $52.08 at which it closed on Tuesday.

📉 Trade growth to slow sharply in 2023 as global economy faces strong headwinds. (WTO)

🛢️ Treasury estimates oil-cap price savings at $160 billion per year. (FT)

⚗️ Italy is buying Russian natural gas again. (Bloomberg)

🍟 Micron to spend up to $100 billion on new chip factory in New York. (Axios)

Investors seem to think the Fed is close to pivoting away from relentless rate hikes, Matt writes.

Driving the news: The S&P 500 just notched its best two-day run — up 5.7% — since the early days of the COVID crisis when the Fed rushed in to, basically, keep the economy from collapsing.

• Tuesday's 3.1% gain for the benchmark index was the best of the year. (Twitter's 22% gain helped — but stocks were up across the board.)

The big picture: The atrocious performance this year of both stocks and bonds has been driven almost entirely by the Fed's effort to raise rates to tamp down inflation.

• In recent weeks, as inflation reports have continued to arrive too high, Fed chair Jerome Powell has doubled down on the central bank's commitment to keep hiking — even acknowledging that it will likely generate economic pain.

Between the lines: Stock market investors seem to think that potential pain — and afterward, a pivot away from rate hikes — could come sooner than they thought even a few days ago.

The reasons: New data shows the U.S. jobs engine may be starting to sputter. Openings in August collapsed by more than 1 million.

• Manufacturing is also slowing fast.
• Other central banks may be easing up on rate hikes — Australia just hiked by less than expected.
• And financial strains — like the U.K.'s rate shock that hammered pensions, or persistent market doubts about the health of Credit Suisse — are emerging.

Yes, but: The bond market doesn't share the stock market's conviction that we're near the end of the rate-hiking cycle. If it did, we'd see yields on Treasury bonds falling more sharply.

What we're watching: For confirmation that this is just another bear market rally, the type of periodic upswing — like the one we saw over the summer — that can take hold from time to time despite the broader downward trajectory that defines a bear market.

• If we don't get confirmation from Fed officials that they think they're getting inflation under control, expect this rally to peter out, too.

The automobile market still hasn't fully recovered from pandemic-era supply disruptions — and now rising interest rates are also clobbering affordability, Emily writes.

The big picture: Vehicle sales are at lows not seen in a decade, and buyers are shelling out record amounts for new SUVs, cars and trucks.

• The average annual percentage rate on a new vehicle loan rose to 5.9% in September, from 4.1% last December. APRs are now at their highest level since 2019, according to new data from Edmunds.

By the numbers: The average monthly payment on a new vehicle hit a high of $703 during the quarter.

• The amount that buyers financed for a new vehicle reached an all-time high of $41,347, compared to $38,315 last year.
• Rates are pricier for used car loans — the average is 9.2%, according to data from Edmunds.
• 14% of borrowers in Q3 committed to paying $1,000 or more a month on their car loan — compared to 8.3% in 2021.

What's happening: Inventory is still low due to lingering supply chain snags. Demand, though down from the giddy highs of 2021, remains elevated.

• Some of it is pent-up, as it's been hard to buy a car these past few years.
• Automakers are still feeling optimistic about sales holding up, the WSJ reported. As a result, they aren't subsidizing loans as much as they used to — there's no need for that, with inventories so low.
• "Gone are the days of 0% financing on new vehicles," the WSJ noted.
• And, of course, rates overall are going up because the Federal Reserve is hiking rates to squash demand.

This isn't just a supply chain story. Even before the pandemic, Americans were spending more on vehicles and increasingly buying expensive SUVs and trucks.

• In 2010 about half of all vehicles Americans bought were cars, according to Edmunds data. In the first half of 2022 — even as gas prices were surging — cars were just a quarter of purchases.

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