| Good morning. Big techs stung by wobbling demand, ECB's commitment and a dramatically different era for traders. Here's what people are talking about. Apple, Amazon and Alphabet, technology bellwethers with a combined market value approaching $5 trillion, posted results Thursday that show an economic slowdown is throttling demand for electronics, e-commerce, cloud computing and digital advertising — mainstays of the global tech economy. Apple's sales fell more than analysts predicted during the holiday quarter, Amazon's revenue was trimmed by soft consumer demand and Alphabet's results missed Wall Street estimates. Each of the big tech companies reporting Thursday also underscored the ways they're working to move past the slump. Late to the global interest-rate hiking party, the European Central Bank is trying to convince everyone that it will also be one of the last to leave. With counterparts from the US to the UK sending out signals of waning aggression after drastic monetary tightening, euro-zone officials insist their own onslaught against inflation isn't about to let up. ECB President Christine Lagarde all but promised on Thursday to repeat a hefty half-point hike in March, with the prospect of more action thereafter. But officials risk looking increasingly isolated as investors show growing confidence that the global inflation shock is fading.  | Gautam Adani has seen $58 billion erased from his personal fortune in the span of just six trading days — a downfall so spectacular that it defies just about every historical comparison. He's not quite like onetime crypto wunderkind Sam Bankman-Fried or Archegos Capital Management's Bill Hwang, who went from tens of billions to nothing in a flash as their leveraged trades imploded. After all, even after a share-price collapse in the wake of Hindenburg Research's short-seller report, Adani oversees a sprawling conglomerate that builds capital-intensive infrastructure such as ports and airports in line with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's development goals. Derivatives shops, used to clearing hundreds of billions of dollars in trades every day, found themselves in a dramatically different era this week: the old days of manually processing deals. Early Tuesday morning in Europe, a little known, but critically important software company that underpins the smooth functioning of stock, bond and commodities markets started to seize up. London-based ION Trading UK had succumbed to a cyberattack. Suddenly, in offices across the globe, traders and brokers turned to spreadsheets to keep track of their deals. European shares may struggle for traction as traders weigh poor results from Apple, Amazon and Alphabet. Ukraine and the European Commission hold a summit to discuss Kyiv's integration in the bloc, with Ursula von der Leyen and Charles Michel expected to attend. Data include S&P Global services PMIs for countries including France, Germany and Italy. Sanofi, Assa Abloy, CaixaBank, Coloplast are on deck for earnings. This is what's caught our eye over the past 24 hours. Gold has once again revealed its true use -- as a hedge against currency volatility. It soared to a record high in pound terms on Thursday. A myriad of factors are playing a role, of course. The UK economy struggles to find a new purpose in a post-Brexit world; inflation remains a headache globally; and buyers of physical metal in top consumer China are celebrating the lifting of lockdown curbs by gifting bullion. But whether it pushes to all-time highs in dollar terms (which we all know is what really matters) will depend as much on the outlook for the US currency as it does on momentum on the gold chart and its physical demand. This commentary first ran on Markets Live on the Bloomberg Terminal, where Eddie van der Walt is Deputy Managing Editor based in London. Follow him on Twitter at @EdVanDerWalt. | 
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