United Rentals is the largest rental equipment company in the world, with a store network almost three times the size of any other provider, and locations in 49 states and all Canadian provinces. The company has over 26,300 employees and approximately 1,600 rental locations in the U.S. and Canada, as well as locations in Europe, Australia and New Zealand. The shares are a component of the S&P 500.

U.S. stocks rose on Friday morning following PCE data. The Fed's preferred inflation indicator, the personal consumption expenditures index (PCE), rose 0.3% in March, which was below estimates of a 0.5% increase and matched the increase in February. Core PCE also rose 0.3%, which was steady from last month and in line with estimates. The latest readings bring the annual rate for headline PCE to 2.7%, up from 2.5% in February, and core PCE to 2.8%, which was unchanged from last month. The Dow was down 0.4%, the S&P 500 fell 1.1% and the Nasdaq lost 2.1%. Crude oil is trading near $84 per barrel and gold is up $5 to $2348 per ounce.

United Rentals is the world’s largest equipment rental company. It principally operates in the United States and Canada, where it commands approximately 17% share in a highly fragmented market. It serves three end markets: general industrial, commercial construction, and residential construction. Like its peers, United Rentals historically has provided its customers with equipment that was intermittently used, such as aerial equipment and portable generators. As the company has grown organically and through hundreds of acquisitions since it went public in 1997, its catalog (fleet size of $21 billion) now includes a range of specialty equipment and other items that can be rented for indefinite periods.

The United States economy is full of innovation. It has to be. Manufacturing industries that dominated the economy decades ago - textiles, televisions, even automobiles to a large degree - have moved overseas, where labor and materials costs are lower. Yet the U.S. economy, even during the pandemic and the current period of high inflation, has expanded to record levels. If U.S. corporations weren't innovating, creating new products (such as vaccines and AI) and services (such as Zoom calls) and moving into new markets, the domestic economy would not be growing, and capital would not be flooding into the country. The current high level of the U.S. dollar relative to currencies around the world attests to the confidence that global investors have in the durable and innovative U.S. economy.