The most highly valued tech companies are lower today as people are taking profits or panicking at evaluations. One group exiting are foreign owners of US high-flyers, worried about the US dollar at a two year low. This despite a nice improvement in jobless levels last week, with 881,000 new claimants vs an estimate of 950,000. The Dow Jones is down 800 points, and Q by 5%.

If there are any ructions over election results, Jack Hough wrote in last week's Barrons, stocks will suffer, leading to a repeat of the sell-off in 2000 when Florida had to recount its hanging chads is likely, the associated editor says.

Al Gore conceded for the good of the country, handing the disputed election to George W. Bush. Wall Street lost 5% across the board between election day and Gore's concession. A similar outcome is highly unlikely if it is Trump who falls behind. Worried about toxic politics affecting his portfolio, Hough says he has opted to cut his stock positions to only ~35% of his investments. He doesn't tell us what he owns instead, but bonds are not likely to be the alternative. Perhaps gold or bitcoins.

Today's market lesson is “Never say never”. This adage applies particularly to companies that have older technology which still is needed in the world. An example is steroids, cheap and available anti-inflammatory drugs that turn out to help treat people seriously ill with corona-virus, cutting deaths by a third among those on ventilators.

But technology is not just about health. China is salvaging older systems for telephone linkage that still have a future role. Some older energy sources work better than new ones. Yet Mr. Market tends to be slow in snatching at golden oldie stocks unless they totally crash. This presents buy opportunities to switch from risky US holdings to American Depositary Receipts, our favorites.

Oilpatch

*Angela Merkel may scupper the Nord Stream 2 pipeline to Germany from Russia over the attempted murder of Alexei Navalny. Its purpose was partly to cut Ukraine out from gas shipments

*Schlumberger Ltd of Curacao was deemed to have been the loses on the sale of its fracking assets to Liberty Oilfield Services this week, in return for 37% of LBRT's shares. But Weds. the oil industry's local paper, the Houston Chronicle makes the case for SLB's smarts and the share rose 2.5% and is up another 1.23% today. SLB is gathering cash for its “new energy strategy” announced early this year by new CEO Olivier Le Peuch. This involves developing hydrogen as a fuel, breaking down water into oxygen and hydrogen. He also proposes improved carbon capture. SLB is up 3%. in part because France (where its primary listing is) will spend a third of its COVID-19 recovery euros 1 bn on green investing. We are in this area already with Ormat, ORA, a Nevada company controlled by Israelis, which extracts and stores geothermal power. It is again below $60 (it's high in Feb. was $87).

*BP plc (BP) is up 1.1% on currency factors. Royal Dutch Shell B (RDS-B) is up by 0.6% for the same reason.

*Meanwhile Tesla (TSLA) has lost over 7% in part because funds are over-invested in its shares. The spillover hurt Nio (NIO), down another 6% after more than quadrupling YTD. It delivered 104% more vehicles in August than a year earlier. It is selling robotaxis to Intel (INTC) and has cash on hand from the “green” city of Hefei, but is still doing a secondary ADR issue while the going is good raising $1.5 bn—more shares than expected at a lower $17. Its shares opened at $19.7 but are now $18.81, over the new ADRs.

Tech & Tel

*Nokia of Finland will power up China's largest optical telephony network, State Grid Corp. This uses NOK's original radio transmission system to cover territory now being served by cable, in Hebei and Hunan provinces. About 88% of Chinese territory can be reached with optical fibers. Not every Chinese needs or wants 5G.

*While NOK lost 5% today, its archrival, Swedish Ericsson, ERIC, fell even more.

*Tower Semiconductors has lost a third of its value int the past 3 weeks. TSEM is owned by institutions.

*Vodafone (VOD), which we have owned since it bought spun off Alcatel-Lucent, is tapping the market for money despite having won a concession from the Indian tax authorities giving it 10 years to pay dues and taxes and its planned sale with partner Idea of their telephone towers. The market talk was of about a $1.5 bn boost to VOD.

But now Reuters says Verizon (VZ) and Amazon (AMZN) may jointly buy Vodafone-Idea, India's third-largest telco's fiber-optic arm. for $4 bn. India-traded VOD rose 30% on the rumor and closed up 26.8% meaning the gossip was plausible. There had been talks with US carriers earlier. Other rumored bidders include Canadian Brookfield Asst Mgm (BAM) and KKR. In US trading it is down 1.25% all the same.

*Mercado Libre (MELI) has been sold off 7% during the tech wreck today on heavy volume. Microsoft (MSFT), another victim, is down 7.35% despite its $350 mn share buyback.

Drugs

*Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline began enrollment for their phase I-II protein-based vaccine in 440 volunteers. It is an adjuvanted recombinant vaccine using proven and scalable systems tested vs placebo in a randomized double-blind trial. It has done well in earlier trials and if it continues to work they can enter phase III by year-end. Both stocks are down today, GSK by 2% because this sounds boring and slow compared to other searches for a COVID-19 jab.

*Astra-Zeneca (AZN) of Britain is also cautiously collecting data with its phase III having begun. It will take longer than expected earlier to complete this, not till October to yearend, vs an earlier target of Sept. to November. We bought the share recently and it fell 3.3% today.

*Swiss Roche (RHHBY) sub-Genetech will deliver results of its new multiple sclerosis drug at a virtual conference later this month.

Finance

*Even apart from Japanese outfits boosted by Buffett, Asia finance is buoyant today, with Hang Seng Bank up 8.9% in Hong Kong, HSNGF.

*However insurer AIA Asia, AAIGF, has not traded.

*Europe is more cautious with Investor A/B down 1.7%. IVSBF owns a big chunk of Nasdaq stock.

*The exception is Banco Santander up fractionally, SAN.

Eats

*Canada's Alimentation Couche-Tard's target price was raised from C$50 by Raymond James and from C$51 by Scotiabank, both to C$53. ANCUF is off 0.4% today, a good showing in the selloff.