CONTRACT TALKS AT DEERE RESUME:

Contract talks between Deere & Co. and its 10,000 striking workers have resumed, but it wasn’t immediately clear how far apart the two sides remained Monday. Both the company and the United Auto Workers union confirmed that talks had resumed. The strike began Thursday after union members overwhelmingly rejected a proposed contract that would have delivered 5 percent raises to some workers and 6 percent raises to others, depending on their positions in the factory.

MICROSOFT: GATES WARNED IN ’08:

Microsoft executives in 2008 warned Bill Gates to stop sending flirtatious emails to a female employee but dropped the matter after he told them he would stop, the company revealed Monday. The Wall Street Journal was first to report that Brad Smith, then Microsoft’s general counsel and now its president and vice chair, and another executive met with Gates after the company discovered inappropriate emails to a midlevel employee. The newspaper reported that the Microsoft board members who were briefed on the exchange declined to take further action because there wasn’t any physical interaction between Gates and the employee. Gates’ private office said “these claims are false, recycled rumors from sources who have no direct knowledge, and in some cases have significant conflicts of interest.”

GAMESTOP MANIA TESTED SYSTEM:

The stock market certainly shook when hundreds of thousands of regular people suddenly piled into GameStop early this year, driving its price to heights that shocked professional investors. But it didn’t break. That’s one of the takeaways from a report by the Securities and Exchange Commission’s staff released Monday about January’s “memestock” mania. As GameStop shot from $39 to $347 in just a week, some of the stock market’s plumbing began creaking, but the report indicated the market’s basic systems remain sound. The surge also laid bare how much power is being wielded by a new generation of investors armed with apps on their phones.