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Last week saw US indexes fall along with those of many European countries. However, Japan, Hong Kong, and Chinese markets all rose. Boston's State Street Bank, the holding company for many ADRs and funds, raised its dividend to 57¢ from 52¢.

Barron's published roundtable forecasts. As usual there was no consensus on whether stocks will rise or fall. Sonal Desai of Franklin Templeton worries about inflation and tipped SPDR Gold Shares, GLD.

Bullish Abby Joseph Cohen of Goldman Sachs tips Worley Parsons Ltd. (WYGPF), an energy engineering consultancy out of Australia. Note that the p/e ratio of Worley is 78.64x earnings. Medtronic (MDT), my largest US holding, was tipped by bullish William Priest of Epoch Investment Partners. James Anderson of Global Equities focused on Illumina (ILMN) -- a genome sequencer share I also own -- being blocked by the EU from buying back its spun-off subsidiary Grail.

Investor A/B

As promised, here is the result reported last week by Investor A/B, our proxy for a Sweden fund. Its Q2 result is particularly complicated, not only because it is in Swedish Krona, but also because there was a 4:1 stock split during the quarter of both the common shares and the ADRs.

IVSBF closed its quarter with adjusted net asset value of SEK 658,748 million, equivalent to SEK 215 per share. You have to divide by 11.5 to get the dollar equivalent but since the SEK has fallen since the close of the quarter, I am not sure how to convert the numbers. Total shareholder return hit 15%, more than double the return on the Stockholm Index.

The main gains were not from listed companies or Patricia Industries, both of which did worse than the SIXRX. Instead, the gains came from Mölnlycke, the medical arm whose sales rose 18% in constant currencies. It distributed 200 million euros, which you have to multiply by 1.18 to convert into dollars. Investor A/B also sold its Grand Hotel chain in Sweden, which it planned to do at the start of the year.

The best performance was in EQT, its New York City-based investment arm whose investments gained 9% (in SEK). It bought a Dutch fintech payments company called Mollie just days before the quarter ended, according to The Economist. It contributed SEK 3.8 billion to Investor A/B.

IVSBF declared a 14 SEK dividend at the Annual Meeting, which was closed to non-Swedes. As the stock split was approved at the AGM, this means we are getting SEK 3.5 per share. Divide by 11.5 to convert into dollars. Investor A/B halved its leverage to 2.1% from the 2021 opening level of 4.1%. Its debt portfolio now runs for 10 and a quarter years. Barron's says financial stocks fell in H1.

Energy

My stock for the year, Cosan (CSAN) of Brazil, hit a new high on the NYSE last week at $21.18, but it closed the week at $20.75. It is planning an initial public offering of a joint venture with Royal Dutch Shell (RDS-A).

Pembina Pipeline (PBA) of Canada said it will not raise its bid for Inter Pipeline, which was topped by Brookfield with an offer of C$20 per share in cash or 0.25 of a share of Brookfield Infrastructure Corp.

Drugs

Merck (MRK) was approved by the US FDA for its strepotoccus vaccine, which is better than the Pfizer (PFE) equivalent in treating pneumonia sterotype 3, 22F, and 33F. Novo Nordisk (NVO) of Denmark was our best performer in thanks to its insulin and weight loss medication.