Thursday after the market closed the US earnings season began. Among the early reporters is Alcoa, which your editor owns shares in. A college economist friend who later married a Frenchman, making her, like me, the wife of a European, used to sit on the AA board, why I own the share. We were neighbors with her parents-in-law in Brussels and I studied French with her sister-in-law. Judy has since retired but I kept the stock.

Looking at the Paris fashion shows I think designers are not only going in for handicrafts, a dash of pre-technology out of sync with how we now live, but that the bobbles and laces, bells and tchotches on the latest garments are also overly cute and likely to get in the way of their wearers' lifestyle, even if they are trophy wives well away from the world of work. Back-to-barefoot peasantry is fine in party dresses for little girls  (under 7 before they know better) but not for their mamas or grandmas!

The IMF published figures before its Peru summit meeting stating that emerging markets debt is so high at $3 trillion that the result may be global economic turmoil stalling global recovery. This could lead to fire sales and volatility, according to the IMF economists.

However the numbers are misleading. While cheap credit has risks, the emerging markets have some ways to repay their debt. One fund flow left out by the IMF is the hundreds of millions of annual remittances sent home by emerging market expatriate workers. This money feeds into their homeland economies and also can be converted to repay the annual bite.

The reason the IMF leaves out remittances is that it is in the business of organizing foreign aid, which is dwarfed by worker payments according to The Economist.

There is a link between hemlines and economic outlook, but the problem is nobody knows which way it now goes. My own view is that fashion switching gears is as much a sign of desperation as of creativity, requiring wardrobe spending for fashionistas, among whom I do not number myself. The last time I was up on the trends was when I wore a size 6X and my daddy worked in a children's dress company (children did not include boys.) That was when garments were made in the South or in Mexico, not in China.

More  follows from Canada, Germany, Britain, India, Russia, The Netherlands, Israel, Ireland, Colombia, Mexico, and China.

• I bought more Agrium yesterday despite worries about its Australian business which is on the block (not sold as I mistakenly wrote). Down Under is a key site for AGU sales, along with the Americas and Egypt.

Unlike troubled POT (Potash of Saskatchewan), AGU sells all 3 major plant foods: nitrogen, phosphates, and potash, plus specialty fertilizers and controlled-release plant foods.

Earnings are growing faster than Iowa corn, expected to reach US$7.05 this year after hitting only $5.92 last year, up about 19%. The pe ratio is similarly at 19x earnings. If analysts are right its US$-denominated earnings should rise even faster, so its forward p/e ratio is only 15x earnings.

AGU buys its shares back, one reason for the earnings rise. But it has also boosted its dividend every year since 2010 thanks to US activist investors, and it is now $3.50/yr, a 3.5% yield. Growth should continue. First of all there are more mouths to feed. World population this year will rise by 75 million. Moreover, more are middle-class mouths who want to eat meat.

Finally, a long-shot, fertilizers help boost crop output for replacing hydrocarbons, like ethanol. A big production site for AGU is in Argentina. Latin America is a growth site for green fuels.

And the remittances I wrote about above can help sell fertilizer in emerging markets.

• Bill Gross is reportedly suing Pimco for as much as $200 million for having pushed him out as head of the bond fund manager majority owned by Allianz Insurance of Germany, which Gross is also suing. The case is in California State Court but could not be confirmed. Pimco refused to comment.

Gross argues that “a cabal of managing directors seek a bigger slice of the bonus pool” arranged illegally to get him out. They were “driven by lust for power, greed, and a desire to improve their own financial position and reputation at the expense of investors and decency,”  his complaint charges. My source is Mary Childs of Bloomberg. Mr Gross actually resigned right before he was due to be sacked, which may reduce his chances in court.

While there has been no formal riposte from Pimco, it is very much in the news. Mr. Andrew Balls, Pimco's chief investment officer for global fixed income, spoke to Bloomberg on new EU regulations of the bond market saying: “Transparency is a mixed blessing in trading as if it is transparently obvious what you are doing, you may have to act differently. You may provide less liquidity to the market if every man and his dog know[s] what your are doing. That post-trade transparency will promote greater liquidity does not seem sensible.”

Mr. Balls also spoke to Reuters in London to say: “Politics aside, the most sensible thing for the ECB  to step up its intervention would be to increase its purchases of European peripheral debt, outright or versus reduced purchases of low-yielding bunds [German debt]. These are much larger and more liquid markets than European corporate debt.” His reference is to high-yield deficit Eurozone bond issuing countries.

Mr. Balls handles the bond side of Pimco, now with a shade under $1 trillion under management, but until now, unlike Bill Gross, he did not get chummy with the press. Now he has changed tune. This is the second and third quote from him in the past two days.

India

• Vodafone (VOD) has won a tax case in Bombay High Court against a $1.3 bn charge based on transfer pricing over an acquisition, another judicial halt to the Indian tax bureaucracy's taste for filing claims years later against operations by multinational corporations. While India has a relatively independent judiciary, its rulings help the Made In India program being pushed by PM Narendra Modi.

• Vedanta Resources, parent of our Vedanta Ltd. VEDL, rose over 14% in London yesterday. Abhimanyu Sisodia explains why: Under a Supreme Court ruling, Vedanta can export 5.5 mn (metric) tonnes of iron ore from Goa in the current FY (to March 31). VED will account for a quarter of Goa mineral exports. Goa only opened to renewed mining exports recently after banning them in 2012. Moreover VEDL could export even more than the Indian Supremes allowed and its application to do so is now by Goa.

Vivian adds: Goa, a former Portuguese colony in India, is a popular tourist destination thanks to beaches and old churches and fort. The mines are far away from north coast resorts and casinos despite this being India's smallest state.

Drug Stocks

• Indivior is falling because its patents for sublingual Suboxone film for treating addicts safely is being challenged by two generics firms, Mylan (MYL) and Sandoz. Both have filed ANDA applications with the US FDA to produce a generic of the product before the patents run out in 2023-30. INVVY is the source of the patent expiry.

Sandoz is a sub of Swiss Novartis (NVS). INVVY is planing to file patent infringements suits against the generic challengers.

• Another round of reports to the US SEC on insider trading has pushed down our Alkermes, which now is Irish. However, the latest moves by top executives actually resulted in their owning more ALKS shares after their trades completed.

• GlaxoSmithKline will soon pay another $6.5 mn milestone to Codexis for transfer of CDXS's CodEvolver protein engineering platform which GSK uses in PA to develop new enzymes used to make pharma products. GSK has already paid $11 mn for the technology.

• Teva (TEVA) got Russian permission to sell its 3x/wk version of Copaxone to treat multiple sclerosis patients there.

Cars, Energy and Delivery

• The latest link up of Alibaba and our Tencent can save them money with online to offline services like movie ticket buying and food delivery. BABA with Meituan.com and TCTZF with Dianping Hldgs, a sub, will combine O2O operatings but keep their separate brands. Both firms will provide a co-CEO/chairman of the combo believed to be worth north of $20 bn. Like the earlier deal over car-sharing, it helps keep out non-Chinese competitors from what had been the second fastest growing market in online shopping, China, which grew 13% in the year to June 30. Of course if the economy slows so too will O2O but Beijing wants there to be more consumption now.

• Dutch Fiat Chrysler Autos (FCAU) and the UAW worked out a new contract proposal which halted the planned walkout today. But it still must be approved by the union members.

• Veresen exposed why it filed its recent shelf registration: it needs $860 mn to proceed with the Sunrise midstream gas plant in partnership with Mitsubishi and Encana. The plant goes live in 2017 and VSN gets paid fees for service. This will make it easier to fund the next big one at VSN-Toronto, the Jordan Cove liquefaction plant in Oregon. Canaccord Genuity analysts are worried about VSN despite rating it Buy, and cut their C$ target price to $14 from $15, while Royal Bank of Canada dropped its TP to C$ 21 to 19. Insiders have been buying, which is perhaps more important than the Bay Street disarray. It also trades in the US as FCGYF.

• Despite Crédit Suisse removing Schlumberger from its energy stock buy list yesterday, SLB is up nearly 1% today. CS lists its 10 favorites quarterly. Its Russian potential partner, Eurasia Drilling, will be privatized after the SLB offer was blocked by the Kremlin.

• Ecopetrol of Colombia (EC) is up another 2.5% today.

Fund Notes

• Fibra Uno's technical committee voted to keep the new shares which were not issued last April in treasury in order to use them to fund further acquisitions, essentially watering down our FBASF stock. The dominant family owners of the oldest and largest Mexican REIT are now abusing their position to shift to the REIT some of their other real estate duds. There was no proxy for the technical committee vote sent to USA shareholders by the depositary, Deutsche Bank.

The share is behaving as you would expect. The decision was announced on Mexico City radio (as reported by Eduardo Garcia). FUN011-Mex (the ordinary shares, not the ADR) are down over 3% in trading on the Mexican bolsa. Eduardo edits www.sentidocomun.co.mx but is covering this for our readers rather than his.

• An Australian short-seller called Bronte the Beachcomber argued that Pershing Square Holdings (PSHZF) shortened the delay in reporting its monthly and weekly NAV to 24 hours to massage its numbers rather than to stop institutional investors trading against it. I disagree. I think the institutional-edge issue was raised (among other by me) with PSH's manager Bill Ackman because retail investors cannot work out the state of its holdings as efficiently as fund opponents can.

Mr. Ackman is very much in the public eye and is unlikely to fiddle his reports for the sake of a single month's better showing. The fund that has not done well since the public was allowed in. It trades in both Amsterdam and London; the ADR is linked to the Dutch share.