More Chinese Trouble
Of course, it doesn't just behave itself. US jobless claims last week were only 293,000 vs an estimate of 316,000 from the experts. A day after the consumer price rise there was another price rise for producer markets. More Chinese real estate plays are in trouble: Qumei, which bought 4% of Evergrande; Greenland Holdings of Shanghai; E-house and Modernland of Hong Kong; Xinyuan.
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
Tech
*Today a huge Plug Power set of news items crashed the system and resulted in a 7% drop in PLUG stock. This came one day after a top brokerage called upon us all to buy PLUG in advance of the good news, a bit embarrassing for them.
PLUG will build a hydrogen-based steel mill with partner Fortescue in Queensland, Australia, owning half.
It expects to achieve electrolysis sales by next year well ahead of what analysts forecast, valued at $825-850,000 (by Factset). They forecast $760,000.
By 2025 it expects to sell $3 bn of electrolysis systems of 100 megawatts. It will build a hydrogen plant in California.
Its partner Renault of France will launch a hydrogen-fueled van. PLUG is buying Applied Cryotech of Texas for an unrevealed sum. There's more but it terrified investors in Plug Power.
*Qualcomm soared 3% after it featured in the CNBC Jim Lebenthal program today. I own QCOM already.
*State Street gained 1.7% on news that the new Digital Securities Deposit Co. which will aim to settle varying prices for the same stock in different markets, will use STT as its partner. They will start out working on UK American Depositary Receipts which is the easy stuff.
Materials
*Taiwan Semiconductor will build a plant in Japan to ease the shortage. TSM.
*Israeli Tower Semiconductor rose in sympathy or in error. TSEM.
*Gold hit $1799/oz reflecting inflation fears which took down the buck and boosted gold priced in $s.
*Antofagasta which mines copper in Chile rose 7.45%. ANFGF is traded primarily in the UK where it was up 9.04%. Copper is becoming scarce.
*Orbia (MXCHF) reports after the close on Oct. 27. Maybe it will get a new ticker symbol.
Drugs
*Compugen of Israeli rose 4.13% on bullish option trades. It reports on Nov. 4 on its Q3. CGEN.
*Diabetes and weight-loss drug-maker Novo Nordisk of Denmark fell nearly 6% on no news here. NVO may have had to deal with side effects elsewhere. NVO.
*Spun off Oncagen applied for a license for its covid-19 jab at the WHO.
*Exelixis and Storm Therapeutics (of Cambridge, UK) plan to launch a novel small molecule RNA modifying enzyme ADAR1 to treat cancer and screen for it. EXEL also is delivering another non-Hodgkins lymphoma drug to Aurigene which supplies enzymes to EXEL.
*Glaxo refused to pay attention to the call by Bluebell for it to sack its Chairman and CEO. The fund is a tiny investor in British GSK.
*Novacure recouped despite insider sales. Startup drug companies often see insiders selling because they are at high risk with jobs and stock in minnows. I have a taste for its TT Fields which I think are a potential winner. NVCR.
*TEVA gained today on no news.
*Esperion gained nearly 8% for the same reason. ESPR.
*Aurinia (AUPH) rose 4.4% for the same reason.
*Spanish plasma firm Grifols rose nearly 3%, GRFS.
*Theravance got a US patent for Neprilysin inhibitors. TBPH.
None
Producing hydrogen gas by electrolysis is a negative sum operation, meaning it takes more power to produce a packaged pound of hydrogen than can ever be generated from it, even at 100% efficiency. Heat loss and the energy to compres the gas are the culprits there. So they might sell the electrolysis systems, but where will the power to run them come from, especially when folks are allrecharging their electric vehicles. And even if the generating capacity would exist, the grid is not equipped to transport that much electrical power. And grid capacity is a bit like railroad capacity: Expensive and slow to build. So the future is receding at a fair pace.