It didn't take long for the Dow to turn down, after much higher jobless numbers came out today. However, happy Wall Street was with the end of the Trump attack on election results, economic recovery is not yet a slam dunk, even if Janet Yellen heads the Treasury and heals its stupid split with the Fed. Trump symbolically pardoned a couple of turkeys and may do the same for himself and some of his henchmen.

In response to a reader who apparently is descended from Bradford, the first governor of the Plymouth Bay colony where Thanksgiving was first celebrated, I wrote up my very different heritage.

My family is 100% immigrant from 1937 when my parents both individually set sail for America from Nazi Germany. My father's parents eventually left via Portugal but my mother's parents both were murdered by the Nazis. Her father and my dad's father were both German veterans who in World War I who had been trying to kill my husband Paul's father, a British officer. My parents each managed to find distant relatives to provide them with affidavits of support which was required from immigrants, my mother from a distant Milwaukee cousin when her rich New York great-aunt who lived in the Sherry Netherland Hotel, refused to risk her wealth.

They got cruddy jobs and partied like mad. My parents met at a Mardi Gras (Faschings) ball, not a Jewish event. There are no Bradfords in my lineage. My husband is British. We have 2 adopted African American grand-children via our lesbian daughter who maybe descend from people who were here before my lot.

My grandpa Oppenheim used to come to our house for Thanksgiving because his ultra-orthodox daughter with whom he lived refused to celebrate it because it was Goyim Nachas, non-Jewish custom (it sounds like Spanish but is Yiddish.) The Jews already had a harvest festival, Succoth which takes place much earlier in the autumn because Israel is hotter than the USA.

Opa would eat his veggies and potatoes before tackling the turkey, filling himself before the meat. This must have been how he was raised in Nentershausen, near the Fulda gap, son of a bookbinder. My mom's family were less well integrated because their village was in poor land, settled only in the 17th century by Jews and Huguenots.

By the 20th century, the Huguenots were anxious to prove themselves more loyal to Germany than to (gasp) France and turned their anger to their Jewish neighbors. Her village was called Sterbfritz (im Sinnthal) and was one of the places where the Brothers Grimm collected fairy tales, supposedly German but in fact from the Mère Oie tales brought along with their French Bibles by the Huguenot refugees. My mother was a blue-eyed blond as were 3 of her 4 sisters and looked like Hitler's ideal woman. But her parents were murdered all the same. My grandmother, as an Orthodox woman, wore a wig and our photos of her are all in black and white. My maternal grandfather was a tall blue-eyed blond, a very Aryan looking Jew.

Trades

*Greencore GNCGY, sold Monday, today delivered its fiscal year results. Group revenue of £1,264.7 mn was down 12.5% impacted by COVID-19 on food to go categories in H2 2020. Its adjusted EBITDA was £85mn, after charging £10.7m of additional operating costs from the virus. Adjusted operating profit was £32.5 mn and adjusted EPS 2.9 pence. Net debt excluding lease liabilities topped £350.5mn and was 4.4x cash flow. Cash and undrawn committed debt facilities came to only £232 mn at FY end. We are well out of this one.

*I finally got around to buying Aurinia, recommended by Martin Ferera yesterday, AUPH. I paid $13.91 for my shares.

Canada news

*Alimentation Couche-Tard, ANCUF, the Montreal convenience store firm, reported consensus beating Q2 FY earnings after yesterday's close, 661¢, bearing by 14¢, in US $s. Adjusted net earnings were $757 mn up 32% from prior quarter level of $569 mn. Its sales actually rose 6.3% to $3.8 bn, but they were very different by regions, with same-store sales up 4.4% in the US and up 11.4% in Canada while those in Europe rose 8.6%. Revenues in Asia fell 31.4% to $9,71 bn, about which more below Margins were varied, up 0.1% in the USA at 34%, down 1.1% in Eruope at 40.2%, and flat in Canada at 32.6%. Fuel accounted for more business and eating for less on highways served by Couche-Tard because people were working from home. Normalized operating, selling, administration, and general expenses were cut 0.8% across the board. Its cash was boosted by sale of a Toronto property which added $54.7 mn gross and $41 mn net. It plans to spend C$19 buying back its warrants (traded only up north) and will buyback a further C$19 mn after doing one for C$103 mn in the prior quarter. It also did better thanks to forex gains and tax benefits.

It closed its final asset exchange with CrossAmerica Partners to gain control of 24 US Circle K stores and bought Wadsworth stores in Alabama, both using cash on hand.

Its cash and credit access tops $6 bn. ANCUF also raised its dividend by 25% to 8.7 loony cents from 7. It trades in Canada as ARD.A and ATD.B and will do another to repurchase its B shares there. It repaid its entire C$300 mn mature debt. The stock is up 1.23% today.

This is because it worked to grow its business already functional in Europe as well as the USA by building up its presence in Asia. It will pay US$360 mn to acquire Circle K Hong Kong from Convenience Retail Asia of the British Virgin Islands whose stores it will manage, from the Li &Fung Group under a new deal. L&F only acquired them over last year. This will make ANCUF the no. 2 grocery chain in Hong Kong with 340 stores. Circle K also has 33 stores in Macau. Unlike other areas where it operates, the Asian retailers are in high-density communities, not on highways, giving Couche-Tard experience in a new way to sell. The deal will close this year and result in a special dividend for Li shareolders.

Said CEOAlain Bouchard: “Together we can reach millions of more customers in Hong Kong and across Asia as we move forward to become the world's preferred destination for convenience and fuel.”

*Nutrien Ltd NTR can scare people with its very high p/e ratio, estimated at 24.1x earnings by Canada's Investment Reporter. But the ratio doesn't only reflect its C$2.29 earnings this year, but also its expected big 25% rise in 2021. If it earns the excpect C$2.87/sh the p/e ratio will be a reasonable 19.2X earnings. It also pays a nice yield of 3.3%. The company, hq'd in Saskatoon, produces and distributes fertilizers like potash, nitrogen, sulfate, and phosphate worldwide which also supplying agricultural inputs like seeds, tools, crop protection products, merchandise, and farm equipment world-wide. It was formed by a merger of equals between Agrium, which we owned with Potash of Saskatchewan announced in 2016 but only completed in Jan. 2018 because of regulatory delays. One result of the long process was the drop in institutional ownership of POT.

*Today's best-performing stock was Azure Power Global, AZRE of Mauritius, up 8.9%, a new 52-week high. It is not formally Canadian but the Caisse de Dépôt, Quebec's Pension plan, controls it.

*CAE is buying Textron's TRU simulator unit to train up more pilots for Boeing's now permitted 737 planes. The Canadian firm ran out of its own virtual 737 units, down to 16 from 57 before the flying halt after two fatal accidents. It needs to supply its customers. It paid $45 mn for the units. CAE fell 1.9%.

*Algonquin (AQN) and its UK dividend gatherer Atlantica Yield both rose today by 0.64% and 0.34% resp.

*Canada Solar, CSIQ, rose 3.32%.

*Energy Fuels, UUUU, gained 3.77%. Uranium is green and less dangerous than petroleum for your health.

*Veolia gained 3.86%, VEOEY will control Suez eventually. 

Mexicans

*A rising peso and demand for Mexican food during the lockdown boosted the share price of Grupo Bimbo by an astonishing 16% today. GRBMF gains from the lockdown resuming.

*Orbia Advance Corp, MXCHF, is now break-even for 2020. It makes drip feed systems for crops.

Industrials

*Irish CRH was another winner with the stock at $42.26. The former Cement Roadstone Holdings gains from US infrastructure spending.

*Chile's Antofagasta won a UK buy rating reported yesterday over copper shortage risks to the recovery. Today the recovery is not as certain and ANFGF was penalized for selling a stake in the Minnesota Twin Metals project. It is misnamed as it produces copper, nickel, and platinum group metals. The buyer was a royalty company aiming at clean energy. Gold is up today.

*Japanese Fanuc rose today because FANUY factory robots don't catch the virus and the yen is up.

*Johnson Matthey, JMPLY, rose 1%. There will be more cars sold before the vaccines are ready.

*Oilpatch high-flyers today stopped rising: BP, Royal Dutch Shell RDS-B, and Schlumberger, SLB.

Drugs

*Hong Kong's Carrie Lam will crackdown on school liberties which she and Beijing blame for the opposition to China taking control of the former crown colony. Beigene, BGNE, not a Hong Kong outfit is up 2.65% on the news.

*Israeli Compugen CGEN gained 2.3% on no news except one of the innumerable virtual conferences.

*Dr. Reddy's lost 1.8%. RDY has been a recent winner because of higher margins.

*US Theravance Bio, TBPH, rose 5.25% to $17.9 when rated buy with a $30 target price by Evercore.

*Astra-Zeneca AZN fell back 2% over new doubts about the Oxford vaccine. Glaxo GSK fell too.

*TEVA fell 2.12% after a Saudi oil tanker was bombed at a Saudi terminal, presumably by Iran or Palestinians upset at the meeting of Prince Mohammed and PM Netanyahu. Oppenheimer rated it “perform” according to Dow-Jones, but I don't know what that means.

*Swiss Roche RHHBY is up on an FDA OK hopes for its flu med Xofluza.

*Zymeworks (ZYME) rose new British Columbia pharma stock Aurinia AUPF, up 1%. Martin has clout. Wait for his next pick by joining Global-Invsting.com now.

*Bristol-Myers BMY is down. Merck MRK fell 0.5%. Eli Lilly LLY gained because its arthritis drug can be used for emergencies with corona-virus.

*Spanish Grifols (GRFS) fell 0.5%. Antibodies still do matter.

Finance

*Banco Santander SAN fell 0.85%.

*Mitsubishi Financial fell 0.4%. MSBHF. Sumitomo Mitsui SMFG lost 1.9%. Weekends are scary.

*Bank of Nova Scotia BNS just up the road gained 0.16%.

Tech

*Tencent TCEHY and other tech stocks gained because a report told investors that online shopping and digital ads are here to stay. This also boosted Ericsson ERIC and Nokia NOK but not Vodafone. I think the stock market was looking hard for direction from anyone working today.