Industrial enterprise

Attached noted that while supply chains aren’t improving, “the chaos around them has faded, resulting in a more predictable business environment.”

Johnson & Johnson reported shortages in everything from ingredients to packaging and labor, but expects “supply constraints to continue throughout the year, but not in the same measure in the second semester”. And manufacturer of personal products

Kimberly Clark said Omicron’s demise “has helped us improve our supply chain compared to what we expected in January.”

Companies with resources to mitigate supply chain issues were more optimistic. Wells Fargo analyst Christopher Harvey said: “Our analysis of S&P 500 report transcripts suggests that large companies’ supply chains are generally becoming more orderly, coinciding with other indicators that disruption could reach a peak.”

Last week

The problem with technology

The shares rose at the start of the week, after losses the previous Friday. They fell on Tuesday, led by technology, and rallied

Metaplatforms‘ results Wednesday. It was mostly downhill from there. Gross domestic product in the first quarter contracted 1.4% due to lower inventories and higher imports, but inventories rose

Appleit is earnings, only to fall back on its lukewarm forecast. Friday saw big losses. On the week, Dow Jones industrials fell 2.47% to 32,977.21; the S&P 500 fell 3.27% to 4131.93; and the Nasdaq Composite was down 3.93% at 12,334.64.

The pace of gains

It was Big Tech week, for better or worse.

Microsoft beat on Azure cloud performance, and

Alphabet missed, with YouTube ad revenue up 14% but not 25%. Meta Platform’s Facebook user growth rebounded unexpectedly;

Spotify soufflé. Apple beat big but warned of supply chain issues, and cloud couldn’t save

Amazon.co.uk.

General Electric and

Boeing lack;

General Engines and

Visa to beat.

Ukraine: Phase 2

Ukrainian forces held out in the Donbass, and even in Mariupol, where resistance fighters from the steel complex fought. Concerns about a Russian threat to expand the war have grown in Ukraine’s neighbor Moldova. Russian President Putin has again declared an end to peace talks, while his Foreign Ministry has spoken of engagement with Washington and called the risk of nuclear war “very real”. President Biden has offered $33 billion in Ukrainian aid. Gazprom cut off natural gas to Poland and Bulgaria after refusing to pay in roubles; energy buyers are scrambling. Russia

Rosneft failed to sell an oil fleet.

Test China

Covid cases rose in Beijing, triggering panic buying and mass testing, and Shanghai remained in lockdown. Stocks fell, with the Shanghai Composite down 6% on Monday, the most since February 2020. President Xi Jinping called on China to beat US economic growth, and tech stocks rallied on pledges of government support .

Macron wins again

Emmanuel Macron defeated nationalist candidate Marine Le Pen in the French presidential elections, winning 58% of the vote. It was Macron’s second victory over Le Pen, making him the first president to be re-elected in France in two decades. Still, Le Pen’s performance was the best for a far-right candidate since World War II.

Annals of Deal Making

Elon Musk met

Twitter executives and shareholders, and on Monday it had reached a $44 billion privatization deal. He will take on some $12.5 billion in debt, a $12.5 billion loan backed by his

You’re here stake and $21 billion of its own money; the termination fee is only $1 billion, and Twitter shares have remained below the offer price. Tesla shares fell 12% on the news. Musk sold some $8.5 billion worth of Tesla stock, then tweeted that he wouldn’t unload anymore…Bloomberg reported that

Renault was planning to reduce its stake in

Nissan…Blackstone said it was buying a property developer

PS business parks for $7.6 billion.

Write to Teresa Rivas at [email protected]