Thursday Markets Overview

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I am busily selling losers to cut my taxes from the huge gains my shares won in 2021. I am also going to donate my top-performing US stock to Harvard (but for women only, not men) with a special boost for women who are the first in their families to go to college, as I was. My parents were German Jewish refugees and my father was a high school graduate. My mother only attended 2 years of what would have been high school before being made an apprentice. I had on a distant cousin who had graduated from Harvard but he was a day commuter from a Boston suburb, not a live-in like I was. I am donating my Thermo Electron shares which have been a phenomenon and await the paperwork from my broker. I bought these shares 30 years ago when we lived in Washington, DC, with a broker named DavidCarrick from a firm called Dean Witter, both of which are no longer alive, and initially reinvested dividends.

Pharma

*Today we are seeing an across-the-board rise in stock prices on hopes for lower inflation and Omicron jabbing. Glaxo GSK says its antibody-drug is "likely" to be effective against the new variant. Pfizer PFE, not an ADR, said something similar. However none of this is proven. 

*Novartis said it expects 4% CAGR by 2026 thanks to 20 "new assets" (acquired or discovered). It also is using UCB to get therapies to people with Parkinson's disease. Its shares rose a fraction. NVS.

*I exited Theravance which is down ~7% from my basis. I also dropped Takeda which is below my cost. TBPH.

*Astra Zeneca is going to collect a modest profit from its Covid 19 jabs so it is not a sell despite UK market weakness. AZN.

Banks

*Banco Santander is buoyant, first because of hopes for Latin America politics, and now because of stock market optimism. SAN.

Others

*I exited Veolia shares that were down, but not those that were up. VEOEY.

*I exited BP plc because I need losses. I stayed with part of my Shell RDS-B because I like the deal with NIO over battery charging. Shell is also up nearly 5% today. 

*Our Japanese financial SMFG and MSBNF gained 2.48% and 1.6% resp today. They are among my sells.

*Qualcomm is back down a bit but not yet worth selling. QCOM.

*Cosan of Brazil is up 4.4% on news that Peru, Argentina, and Chile will be consolidating their currently separate bourses. CSAN.