Nice weather and a heavy news day, moreover not all upbeat like yesterday, alas. My British husband decided that the royals missed the boat when Meghan joined the family because even today there are many countries with a commonwealth history and mostly non-white citizens. They are now in shock because of the racism shown by some members of “the family firm”. It is nice to know it was not the Queen but of course, the young royals were more likely to seek comfort from someone closer to them in age, or someone designated by the palace to deal with younger royals. So a missed opportunity to show solidarity with Prince Harry and his wife over how their son would look has repercussions beyond the hurt they felt. An aside, the Oprah Winfrey interview also showed that TV broadcasts still make economic sense.

The rally is continuing but it is mostly for US shares, not global ones. Mostly big board and definietely not Nasdaq. Not Gamestop, and alas not Nokia, a Finnish share that was tipped by Reddit again. I am buying more NOK at $3.95.

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Finance

*Standard Life Aberdeen is exiting some of its fund management operations after losing the Lloyd's Bank account. This cut funds under management in half last year compared to 2019, to £29 bn. Non-Lloyd's fund outflows were only £3.1 bn. New CEO Stephen Bird in the conference session stressed that levels of funds under management and profits rose in H2, but also revealed a package of measures to cut the groups costs to income ratio from 85% to 70%. This will require new signups for SLFPY funds from the UK and foreign groups. The Scottish group cut its dividend by a third to 14.6 pence/sh, which analysts mostly had not anticipated. We don't want to sell in a panic. SLFPY opened up 1.04% so we are not alone.

*Panama's Banco Latinoamericano de Comercio Exterieur rose steadily today on no BLX news.

*Bank of Nova Scotia rose 1.75% on no news. BNS.

*Today Aristofanis Papadatos wrote in seekingalpha that Lazard offers a safe 4.7% yield thanks to a 49% payout ratio on profits. We told you first. It opened up 0.99% and now is up 2.04%, because LAZ closed Feb. with assets under management of $260.7 bn, 75% of it equities, boosted 5.6% by performance, inflows of $200 mn, and zapped by forex losses of $300 mn. The yield is only 4.56% and the p/e ratio is 11.3x. I watched it and bought so after Rogers of Ariel tipped LAZ in Barron's.

*Sampo Oyj of Finland today told our SEC that Blackrock Inc owns 10.31% of its voting shares. SAXPY.

*Wall Street is up on the relatively tame inflation data which came out today. The risk is not short-term but longer of course. Now that we have done stimulus it is time to spend on infrastructure.

*Among the potential winners from Vodafone's sale of its Vantage Towers which began today is Morgan-Stanley, the book-runner expected by Bloomberg to book $3.6 mn in fees from the 25% stake sale and an associated euros 2.1 bn loan. That is one of the biggest deals YTD. Vantage will raise euros 19 bn+ for VOD, lower by only Euros 1 bn than expected before covid-19. Trading begins in Frankfurt on Mar. 18 and VOD gained 2% yesterday on the mast sale pricing.

*A day after GE agreed to sell control of its airplane leasing business to Irish AerCorp, raising $24 bn in cash for GE to repay debt, the golden oldie stock fell over 5%. It is also doing a reverse split. Only golden oldies worry about debt these days and it was downrated by S&P.

*Banks on the FTSE 350 index in Britain are beloved by bulls who account for 89% of the analysts covering the banking sector. Yet Banco Santander, with a key UK presence, is not given the same boost. SAN.

*I highly recommend reading the article on TalkMarkets by Michael Lebowitz on the risks of the Fed's huge holdings of T-bills which he expects will result in a rise in the gold price. The article is called “It's Time To Do The Twist Again.” I also contribute to TalkMarkets. It is lovely that the spillover effect of the US stimulus package will boost the economies of other members of the OECD, the rich countries' club, as it claimed today.

*Japan is an OECD member and Mitsubishi Finance (MSBHF) is up 1.3% but Sumitomo Mitsui (SMFG) is up only 0.9%.

*SPDR Gold (GLD) is up 0.14%. TD Ameritrade-Schwab now is offering bitcoin futures for sale to its clients.

Healthcare

*Thermo Fisher Scientific, TMO, my largest holding in this sector, will invest over $600 mn in bio-processing in the next 2 years to double its manufacturing capacity and support its biopharma company clients for research, not only for Covid-19. It will also create 1500 new jobs in 11 sites in the US, Britain, Singapore, and Suzhou (China) working on gene therapies, chromotography resins purification for inoculation research, automation, liquid processing, and dual-milling. TMO gained 1.95%.

*Today drug companies recuperated from the sell-off earlier because many are participating in conferences now. Top performers so far include Abcellera, ABCL, up 6.1%; Zymeworks, ZYME, tipped by Martin Ferrera who also hangs out in British Columbia, up 1.6%; Israeli Compugen CGEN up 9% at the open on the cancer immunology article I noted yesterday, later off half of that; Enlivex, ENLV, up 10% at the opening, now up 4%; Eisai, ESALY up 1.1%; Takeda, TAK, up 1.9%; TEVA up 4.32%; Astra-Zeneca AZN up 1.26%. Exceptions are: Novacure, NVCR, down 0.9%; and Grifols, GRFS, down 0.7%, the latter perhaps because Catalans lost EU Parliamentary protection. Grifols was founded in Barcelona a century ago to collect blood plasma for therapies. JnJ, Merck, and Pfizer also rose.

Electric vehicles

*Tesla TSLA crashed after Swiss brokers warned that Volkswagen would do better in electric cars. However, NIO is less impacted by German sports cars where VW will gain the most.

Funds

*The Taiwan Fund lost another 11% today because there is a water shortage hurting research there. Your editor bought the share out of politics having no recent knowledge on Taiwan. Bad move. But Korea fund, sold to buy TWN fell 1.27% so my switch may not have been totally stupid. I have not visited either country in the last 25 years.

*Emerging Markets Debt Fund, EMD was, bailed out by Templeton last year and is distributing for Feb. 9¢/sh made up of 7.22¢ of earnings and the rest return of capital. That is better than Templeton's own emerging market debt fund, Templeton Emerging Income, TEI.