Today is Boxing Day in Britain and Canada because you are not allowed to fox-hunt on Sunday. The trend requires that gurus tell their readers what will happen in 2022. I have no idea what is in store although today, with various English-speaking analysts off on horseback, we saw the Dow Jones move up over 36,000. One reason may be that in the Xmas break many people went to the movies to see "Spiderman: No way home". Box office receipts topped $1.058 bn, the best tor a movie in the past two years.

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Emerging Markets

*Bloomberg reveals that Pemex raise $119 bn to buy out Shell from their jv refinery in Deerbank, TX. It is the recipient of tax breaks in Mexico to keep merchandise moving, but this seems to be a different bit of government support. Among the lenders was Sumitomo, the Japanese financial group whose shares we own. Other lenders were Barclays which will only be posting tomorrow because of the need to keep down the foxes in England but not the bureaucrats in Mexico.

*China has forced the 3 leading miners of rare earths in its territory to form a single company. Goodby to Minmetals, Chinalco, and China Southern.

*India's Azure Power AZRE is doing a secondary to raise money it is under pressure to find for state and local government contracts it cannot enforce. It will offer $250 mn of new shares to hapless foreign investors. The ADR stock has plummeted to $8.02 today. While I love the idea of green energy from sun and wind in India I think the politics are seriously negative for a private power firm. I won't add to my holdings.

Finance

*Lazard's Global Income Fund dropped 2.1% today although it is not yet ex-divvie. Jumping the gun may mean this is an appealing stock being arbitraged by institutions. LGI.

*Banco Santander of Spain rose 1.61%. It usually trades in the UK as well as Madrid but today Britain is still on holiday. SAN.

*Seeking alpha says to buy gold. The yellow metal rose0.18%, a Hebrew lucky number (the letters spell out Chai, meaning life.) It is at $169.28. I think if someone put a gun to my head and asked what will go up next year I would say GLD. 

*Like Beijing, our SEC also dislikes variable interest entities, a way to raise money for Chinese companies without giving rights of ownership. This is almost sure to be the big negative in US markets in the coming year.

*Mercado Libre of Uruguay gained 2.56% today. MELI.

Pharma

*The Lancet, a respected British medical journal, today publishes data on Cansino's phase III trial of covid-19 trials which were held in Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Pakistan, and Russia. The trial, which included an inhalation 2 weeks after the bab, was 96% effective in protecting 18 to 60-year-olds. I am passed that use-by data.

*Several pharma shares were up today. Swiss Roche (RHHBY) gained 1.6%. US Eli Lilly (LLY) rose 3.52%. Danish Novo Nordisk NVO jumped 2.6%. My guess is that these leaps are because healthcare is a big question mark for next year.

*Merck also gained. It is a dividend payer which appeals to the market for 2022. MRK.

Tech

*Qualcomm is up 1.25%. It has some medical business. QCOM.

*Finnish Nokia is up 2.2%.NOK.

Chips with everything

*Both our semiconductor plays, TSEM of Israel and TSM of Singapore are up, by 2.25% and 1.71% resp.

*IBM and T are also dividend payers and also rose. So did Qualcomm, still my largest US holding, despite donating half to Harvard.