Today the perfumes of Arabia dissipated and markets were down sharply. Even the perennial optimist Harvey Katz, who posts the Value Line forecasts of market trends wrote about "the street's latest selloff" which he labeled a possible "pause that refreshes" rather than "the start of an extended spiral down". To be sure, downtrends do eventually run out of pessimistic steam, but it can take a while.

The worst-hit sectors suffered from company-specific negatives. And one positive. It is a holiday in China but Hong Kong is open and down a bit.

Mexican inflation estimates rose according to Eduardo Garcia. 

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Russia agreed to ship more gas to Europe during the shortfall for winter fuel, to show it is a responsible partner and to pay back Germany for its Baltic gas pipeline. This helped boost the share price of German ute E.on SE (EONGY) rose but French rival Veolia (VEOEY) fell because EON via a British sub called E. Next it will supply natural gas to 233,000 British users of energy whose suppliers went bankrupt last month Enstroga, Igloo, and Symbio Energy. Getting the job was competitive and almost all the accounts were domestic households. Meanwhile, VEOEY did a euros 2.51 bn capital increase to pay for its purchase of Suez,

Qualcomm is being penalized for buying Veoneer. QCOM.

Japanese Nintendo fell because Cathie Woods sold NTDOY. Even worse, Takeda TAK, a pharma firm, ended 2 narcolepsy trials for TAK994 because of safety concerns. Narcolepsy is daytime sleepiness which sometimes is part of a general syndrome and sometimes solo, why there were 2 trials. TAK fell the 2nd most of all our holdings, by 8.99%. More drug stocks below.

 ZYME, Zymeworks, rose a day late after its ALX payment from its Her-2 expressing breast cancer.

Glaxo GSK, the current maker of the malaria vaccine funded by the WHO, will transfer its findings to India drug firm Bharat Biotech but will provide 15 mn doses untilthen annually. The big problem with mosquirix is that it takes 4 jabs to ensure protection so Africans will still have to also use bed-nets. A single injection only helps a third of those who receive it resist malaria, which is passed by a mosquito in tropical countries.

Pfizer will work with Voyager Therapeutics to develop gene therapies, a new business for PFE. 

TEVA, so beaten down, has managed to rise today in Israeli trading.

Danish Novo Nordisk, an insulin specialist, rose to DK 4.99 from 4.97 on a brokerage upgrade. It mainy earns dollars that are falling against the Kronor. NVO.

Merck, facing loss of its Keytruda patent in 7 years, is doing deals with UK OzNoi and Canadian PlantForm to gain access to new biosimilars from Brazil and India for its blockbuster. It also is using Acceleron to gain entry to high blood pressure meds. Having risen so high over its pills to stop covid-19 deaths and hospitalizations, MRK is under attack from analysts who missed the rise. 

UK supermarket chain Tesco whose shares I own via my bank has had a brilliant half year and is doing a share buyback. I am not sure if US owners will be getting the offer. 

Higher interest rates spell out inflation risks but they do help banks. Santander, SAN, rose.

Prosus of South Africa is doing a stock buy back to spread the risk there but its stock is down because of one of its Hong Kong holdings losing traction. PROSY was spun out by Naspers to lower its link to Tencent but the link persists all the same. I like PROSUS because it is a global media play, like my own letter.

Canadian Nutrien (NTR) got a 2 Canada cents profit forecast rise.