Happy December to all. Yesterday late it looked like Jerome Powell's move to cut "non-transitory" inflation sooner was a bit more welcome in the markets that were worried about higher prices and the latest covid variant with a lot of mutations.

Today the market was extremely bullish almost across the board. Things were helped by fear of missing out, FOMO, which spread from one share to the next. Our portfolio also gained from bits of good news. Harvey Katz of Value Line predicted that GDP this year would gain 4 to 5% from the start of the year. However, the persistent inflation levels this year will almost certainly lower growth in 2022 because of inflation this year in everything from house prices....to stock prices. My source is Cornerstone Macro forecasts which notes that the S&P 500 has gained 40% in the current year, so market value of domestic listed companies is at a record 2.5x gross domestic products.

Things are also out of whack in the IPO market where 49% of new issues worth over $1 billion in the year to Dec. are below their initial offering price, so $20 bn paid for the newbies is now only worth $15 bn. Most of the busted plays were not made in the US but in foreign markets like London, Hong Kong, and India. India had only one major IPO, PayTM which crashed on day 2. I did give a timely warning about this stock because I have some familiarity with how Indians distrust on-line payments systems in a country where I pay two stringers for articles!. 

Please note that there is still another fly in the ointment as the US dollar is trading at widely spread ranges, with a difference of 110 ticks (1.1%) quite abnormal, and also I think linked to inflation risk. London is in a confirmed bear market according to the experts.

More good news today has led to a Dow Jones Industrial gain of 500 points, boosted by good news on employment in Nov., which saw 534,000 new jobs filled. The good number came after more than half a year of bad numbers, remember.

Note that Russia has expelled US diplomats who have served there for over 3 years with effect Jan. 31, 2022. This is in retaliation for our expelling longer-term Russkies working here. 

Photo by Guneet Jassal on Unsplash

Industrials and funds

*BAE sold an electronic compass cell platform for warfare using software rather than hardware to Uncle Sam. The UK firm will make this in 3 US sites but will use British tech backup. BAESY.

*NIO, our Chinese electric vehicle company published its sales data for November which saw the delivery of 10,807 vehicles, up 105.6% from last year. It also achieved record levels of delivery YTD, at 80,940, up 120.4% plus good sales of its ES8, ES6, and EC6 cars, at 156,581 YTD. I hope that the profits will align with sales. It was given a target price of $56 by Goldman Sachs. 

*The IBM spinoff Kyndryl (KD) finally is up by 4.8% after selling after it was distributed to shareholder of Big Blue. This week's Barron's is also bullish on IBM itself for which its Eric Savitz predicts a 50% share price rise after talking with analysts. 

*Deere DE, which I bought on the assumption that it would settle with the UAW strikers has been a loser even though they did settle. But it did rise 1.9% today. 

*Fibra Uno of Mexico (FBASF)is up 2.54%. MXCHY is up 10.7%. Bakery group Bimbo (GRBMF) is ahead 12.83%. Cemex CX is up 3.9%. These shares barely trade in the USA but were in focus yesterday. 

*Taiwan Fund TWN is up 2.7% because we cannot focus on more than one enemy at a time. Taiwan Semiconductor TSM is up 4.54%. Israeli Tower Semi TSEM is up 4.53%. 

*Energy Fuels, UUUU, a bellwether share, is up 4% today. Schlumberger Ltd SLB rose 4.46% in the UK today to $29.96/sh. 

*With UK stocks down, investors in London jumped into Nokia which rose 2.2% in London. NOK.

*However Naspers fell to $31.96 in London off 3.75% over bans on South African visitors. US traders reversed this by opening NPSNY at a rise of 4.76%.

*Canadian General Fund (CGRIF) jumped up 2.05% today at the opening. Nutrien (NTR) is up 3.47%. Canada stocks are even more bullish than US ones today. 

Drugs

*There is no real answer on how the new variant of Covid-19 will be affected by older inoculations. For whatever it is worth, the pharmacist who jabbed me with a booster yesterday predicted that there would have to be another booster coming. 

*Israeli Teva is up sharply because its latest authorized generic in the US market is a copy of Epiduro Forte gel, a cure for acne, a product whose sales in the year to Sept. 30 hit $253 mn. TEVA.

*Canadian Zymeworks dosed its first patient in trials of Azymetric and EFEGT to trigger antibodies against solid cancers. This will yield as much as $50 mn (US) upfront and milestones of as much as $1.12 bn along with development funds of $282 mn. ZYME broke its losing trend on this news.Its earlier autumn trial of zandatamab against breast cancer using an ALX Oncology drug CD47 against breast cancer was received without much confidence because it already is a big focus in pharma. 

*Japanese Takeda is down 0.33%. TAK.

*Theravance recouped 4.64% today (TBPH).

*Genfit was another gainer in Britain, up 4.37%. It trades in dollars which were also up in the UK after Powell's speech. GNFT.