Monday Market Review
The Great Trek continues. Today I learned that the engineers working on my website are all outside the USA, because now everything in the domain is functional, but only in Drupal. Neither I nor the head of the Atlanta-based company working on my site do Drupal—only the team in India. So as a result of a holiday weekend there it will take another day or two before we get full functionality back. It will be this week according to the Atlanta boss.
Holders of H-1B visas who do software engineering and are still in the USA, unlike my team, can get as much as $2 mn for jumping ship to Facebook or Google. Perhaps that's why they moved back home. After Google going down last week, Zoom is out today.
The Russian denials that Alexei Navalny was poisoned were lies. The medicos at Berlin's Charité Hospital said they found a substance used in nerve gas and pesticides in his body. He is in an induced coma and being treated with atropine, an antidote to nerve gas. He was flown to Berlin by a charity connected to the Russian Pussy Riot band.
TikTok parent ByteDance is suing the White House for the executive order calling for its sale as a violation of the 5th Amendment which requires due process for barring its US operations. It is always nice to get US constitutional lessons from China. I will not comment on the Falwells as this is not appropriate for a non-Christian. There are important political moves both in Mexico and Canada.
More follows about our portfolio picks.
*Today's surprise riser is GE. It is either Larry Culp staying on or hopes for economic recovery with measures to open the US economy. Most analysts hate GE but institutional investors own it.
Drugs
*The Administration agreement to rush to use the Oxford University-Astra-Zeneca antivirus and plasma from recovered patients boosted AZN's stock by over 2% today. It will not have tested as many people with its jab before the US Food & Drug Administration order goes live. There will have only been 10,000 people tested whereas the normal minimum is 30,000.
The bad news is that you can get corona virus twice, but different strains according to researchers in Hong Kong. The infections were 3 ½ months apart. Opko Health revealed that it found positive virus markers in 77 non-infected National Football League players.
*Teva (TEVA) is back in the dumps again down 3.53%. Too many lawsuits.
*Martin Ferera's pick Zymeworks (ZYME) of Canada, gained 4.5%. Conservatives named new challenger to Trudeau, Erin O'Toole.
*However, Dr. Reddy's, Abhimanyu's pick, is down 0.34% because RDY is not AZN.
Tech & Tel
*NIO of China is not splitting but its share was boosted by the split at another electric car-maker.
*Finnish Nokia's (NOK) new broom CEO 's arrival boosted the cellphone company.
*Gaming stock Nintendo (NTDOF) of Japan gained 5.7% and hit a year's high, presumably because it may win some followers away from Tik-Tok.
*Vodafone (VOD), talked up in Barron's this weekend, rose 2.4%.
*Latin internet giant Mercado Libre added a few points to its price in the rush to buy US MELI rivals.
*Israeli-owned Tower Semiconductor (TSEM) gained ~1%.
Energy
*Schlumberger Ltd was a winner as a huge storm is shutting in oil production in the Gulf of Mexico. SLB yields 2.75.
*BP plc capped its drills in the area and brought crews to land, having learned the hard way. It rose 2.7%.
*Royal Dutch Shell which drills elsewhere is up 3.27%. (RDS-B).
*Canadian nuclear fuel supplier Cameco gained over 1%. CCJ is relatively immune to hurricanes.
Finance
*Banco Santander (SAN) gained 3.7% because Spain can cope with coronavirus and staffers trying to pull a fast one better than younger banks.
*Sweden's Investor A/B reversed the Friday selloff. IVSBF gained 2.33%.
*Scottish Standard Life Aberdeen, fund manager, SLFPY, is up 4.4%.
*Sumitomo Mitsui Financial jumped nearly 2%. on yen strength.
*Sampo Oij rose another 1.2%, SAXPY of Finland.
Mexicans
*There is nothing so lovely as a photo of the first brother collecting loot for Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, which boosted Mexican capitalism. Orbia Advance gained 11% not because it is selling lots of drip feed systems to Indian farmers. The ask is now $3.99.
*Also up are Mexican Equity & Income Fund and Cemex (CX).
*Fibra Uno (FBASF) is up over 7%. It is a real estate investment trust specializing in retailing.
Quite a bit of information all in one place, thanks!
And of course the Russian issued denials that Alexei Navalny was poisoned. But they have been using dirty tricks for at least as long as I could read the news, so it is nothing new. Exactly what ai would expect from a police state.
we will soon get our site up and running again and if you want to continue to read my daily blog you need to think about subscribing. we will not charge for the blogs until they are locked in to our site and not sent to people by talk-markets like now. Yes the Russians do like to kill anti-Putin people to show them who is in charge. It is a relic of his being a KGB man.