Unclench your jaw. Take a deep breath. This has been your Monday Morrow Meditation. Let's get into it.

✈️ SPRING FLINGS

Vacation deprivation is real, and people are going a little wild for spring break this year (even though they really, really shouldn’t).

Nearly 1.4 million people passed through TSA checkpoints on Saturday — the 10th straight day that more than 1 million passengers traveled through American airports.

Do you hear that noise? It sounds almost like the tortured screams of thousands of doctors, virologists and infectious disease specialists begging people to please please please hang on a little longer

Although millions of Americans have been vaccinated, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention continues to recommend that people avoid travel. (To which Americans are saying, respectfully, shut up, nerds…)

TRAVEL BOUNCES BACK
In addition to air travel soaring, there are other signs people are throwing caution to the wind:

Airbnb: Bookings for "warm weather locales, small beach towns, and access to state and national parks" are fueling the home-sharing website. The number of people searching for properties with outdoor spaces was 35 times higher compared with the same travel period a year ago.
Cheap hotels: The hotel industry had, to put it lightly, a dismal 2020. But things are looking up. Last week, Extended Stay America, which fared better than its rivals in the pandemic, was sold to Blackstone and Starwood Capital for $6.6 billion. That’s a big bet on the chain and that it has room to grow.
Disneyland: The California flagship park and its sister theme park California Adventure will reopen at a limited capacity on April 30.

🚚 THE GREAT CHIP SHORTAGE

A year ago, it seemed like a safe bet that people would buy fewer cars — the pandemic halted commutes, travel restrictions were imposed, and millions of people were laid off. In response, automakers paused production and cut back on orders for computer chips.

Meanwhile, electronics manufacturers, which enjoyed strong sales during the pandemic, happily snapped up the excess chip supply.

Seems like a perfect supply-and-demand Econ 101 moment, right?

But then car sales bounced back sooner than anyone expected, and automakers around the world were left with a chip shortage. (Fun fact: The average car has between 50 and 150 chips in it, controlling a range of functions including airbags, power windows and dashboard displays.)

Here’s how bad that shortage has become:

Ford has started building the nation's best-selling vehicle, the F-150 pickup, without some of the chips it needs. It will park those unfinished trucks while they await the arrival of the missing chips, rather than shipping them to dealerships.
Ford has also temporarily shut down one of three shifts at the Kentucky Truck plant where the full-size Expedition and Navigator SUVs are built.
Stellantis, the automaker formed by the merger of Fiat Chrysler and France's PSA Group, is also delaying completion of its Ram 1500 Classic pickups as it waits for chips.

CNN Business’ Chris Isidore has more.

🏡 NUMBER OF THE DAY

14 days

High demand and low inventory means homes are selling at a record pace in the United States. In the most popular price range — between $250,000 and $500,000 — properties were on the market for just 14 days last month. The median price of a home, $313,000, is now 16% higher than a year ago. CNN Business’ Anna Bahney explains why.

👟 HARD TO GET

It’s getting harder to find Nikes at your local shoe store. That’s by design.

Nike is increasingly cutting ties with retailers like Amazon as well as smaller independent stores and directing customers to its own website. That’s a big shift from its early days, before the internet, when the sneaker store at the mall was the place to find out about the next must-have shoe.

WHY THE CHANGE?

Money, honey: Nike has said it can make more than double the profit selling goods through its own website and physical stores than it can through wholesale partners.

Brand purity: Nike is eliminating what it calls "undifferentiated" retail partners — stores that are "plopping Nike stuff on their shelf or website and hoping somebody finds it," said Sam Poser, an analyst at Williams Trading who covers the company. Nike is "saying to the retailers that unless you do things that enhance the brand, we're not going to sell to you."

D2C: Direct to consumer, bb. It’s all the rage in retail. And Nike’s rivals Adidas and Under Armour are following suit.

My colleague Nathiel Meyersohn has all the details here.

WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON?

💼Goldman Sachs' CEO says the bank will strengthen enforcement of its "Saturday rule" (i.e. no work from 9pm Friday to 9am Sunday) and speed up hiring of junior bankers after a group of analysts described "inhumane" conditions, including 95-hour weeks and instances of workplace abuse.

🚆Two of North America's largest railroad companies announced a merger that would connect freight customers to Canada, the United States and Mexico on a single network for the first time in history.

⛔Leon Black is completely stepping away from running private equity firm Apollo Global Management amid scrutiny over the billionaire's ties to Jeffrey Epstein.

🔍Tesla CEO Elon Musk says his company's cars would never be used for spying in China, in response to reports that the country's military has banned the vehicles over such concerns.

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