Tech Roundup: Chinese tech activity, Twitter and Musk drama steal investors' attention
Scott Olson

Tech stocks had a rough week of it, as the latest Federal Reserve comments about the economy cast a cloud over any early Christmas cheer on Wall Street.
Chinese tech stocks were active as ongoing issues between Beijing and Washington continued to impact investor's sentiment about many of China's biggest tech leaders. Earlier in the week, the likes of Alibaba (NYSE:BABA) and JD.com (JD) got a boost as China filed a new complaint against the United States with the World Trade Organization. At issue were new U.S. rules against selling certain semiconductor technologies to Chinese companies due to possible connections with China's military.
In its new complaint, China has argued that the U.S. actions amount to little more than trade protection.
While many Chinese tech stocks rose after the Beijng's WTO move, losses soon came back after U.S. regulators said they were now to receive "complete access" to the books on auditors that represent Chinese companies that have their shares traded in the U.S. Under the new U.S. regulations, Chinese companies risk being de-listed from U.S. stock exchanges if they fail to allow their audits to be inspected by American officials for three consecutive years.
At the end of the week, Alibaba (BABA) got a mild lift after it was revealed that company co-founder Joe Tsai had filed to sell $260M worth of his Alibaba (BABA) stock.
And Alibaba (BABA) was also reportedly banned from buying certain chip products made by Britain's Arm Holdings.
As if all of that weren't enough, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi got onto the anti-TikTok bandwagon and threw her support behind an effort to ban the Chinese-owned app from U.S. government devices.
Elon Musk had a busy week, with his hand full of more drama at Twitter (TWTR). Loup Ventures managing partner Gene Munster said Musk needs to "pull it together" regarding his running of Twitter, and the impact his actions are having on Tesla (TSLA). And those actions, which include Musk selling $3.6B worth of his Tesla (TSLA) stock, have led to skepticism about his attention to Tesla (TSLA) on Wall Street, as the company's shares hit a 52-week-low earlier in the week.
And by the end of the week, Musk was reportedly seeking new investors to put their money into Twitter (TWTR) at the $54.20 a share price he paid for the company.
While many tech companies use December as a time to cool their heels, and even close up shop for week around Christmas and New Year's, some have used the month to report their most-recent quarterly results. Among those, Adobe (NASDAQ:ADBE) got a boost on Friday as the digital-media technology leader gave an upbeat forecast to go along with strong fiscal fourth-quarter results and positive comments about the reception of its $20B acquisition of online collaboration technology company Figma.
Oracle (ORCL) also got a lift earlier in the week as it reported fiscal second-quarter results that topped expectations that were led by ongoing strength in its cloud business.
Meanwhile, Roblox (RBLX) took a bruising as it delivered its November metrics, which included bookings showing a big impact from the effects of a strong U.S. dollar.
Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) also made some waves following reports that it is considering allowing third-party app stores on its iPhone and iPads in order to meet regulations from the European Union. Some analysts said that process, known as "sideloading" could provide a benefit to some specific types of apps, while also providing more risk to Google.