The new month saw a market rally in the US after an eleventh-hour Congressional stopgap deal to avoid a shutdown was reached and a modestly lower level of new unemployment benefits filers, at 837,00 vs a forecast of 850,000. But we are surely whistling in the dark given the political risks.

Moreover overnight there were serious problems, a computer failure on the Tokyo stock market which led to a decision to invalidate and suspend all trades there early today.. Moreover, China was having another one of those really big holidays.

In Britain, there were outages of Microsoft and Outlook just after the European Union announced that it was suing the UK for “breaching” its divorce deal over how Ireland would be treated under Brexit. So many people were reading the news on-line that systems crashed.

If the tech challenge is not enough to scare you, my former Senate staff colleague Steve Bryen wrote an article in Asia Times about how drones were being used and shot down in the Caucasus Mountain war over Nagorno Karabakh, the Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan. The drones came from Israel, Turkey, Russia, and home-labs, and at least one Armenian surface-to-air-missile was shot down by an Israeli Harap drone. Why Israel sold to the Muslims fighting Christians is mysterious, but there are tradeoffs.

My view: “The war after the next will be fought with clubs”, the slogan the CND peace movement of my youth. More about military deals and Japanese flops below plus a key move in a takeover bid.

*French water and waste ute Veolia, which has installed a huge crane in the East River outside our upstairs apartment in this building, is also being aggressive in France. Its bid for euros 15.5 per share for the 29.9% stake of Engie in archrival Suez was raised to euros 18/sh yesterday but the deadline remained at midnight. Engie's board which had opposed the sale had a late-night meeting whose outcome could not be predicted by today's Financial Times.

VEOEY also met with government officials because La République is an even larger shareholder in Suez than Engie. Suez may yet make a counter-offer to Engie. Meanwhile, if the Engie deal is done (nobody knows yet) Veolia will bid for the total outstanding 70.1% stake in Suez later.

To get there, Suez will have to undo its agreement to sell its French water business to Dutch fund Meridian, a way to stop the wet side of the two utes from combining. The situation is confused and VEOEY here rose barely 6 cents (0.28%) while Suez stock, traded on the pinks as SZEVF rose $2 to a $18.97 midpoint on what for it is heavy volume, 1000 shares. As it is Suez remaining shareholders are at risk if Engie caves because the compeition investigation will be long and hard and they are not guaranteed the new high price. Meridian is not a long-term solution for water and waste operations.

*Not quite as aggressively, BAE Systems, maker of weapons of war, announced two big deals today. It will collect $126.7 mn from the US Navy for upgrading M88A2 combat lift and evacuation systems. British BAESY also got an order for upgrading small and medium guns on frigates the UK bought from Bofors. Anchors aweigh! BAESY gained 1.2% here

*Electric car maker Tesla cut the prices of the Model 3 it makes in China which led to a 0.5% drop in the price of rival Chinese car-maker Nio NIO at the opening. Now it is up 1.8%+. TSLA jumped 2.3% and even Nikola NKLA rose by 20%, because it may be taken over wholly by GM GM after it was shot down by the Hindenberg short-seller.

Drug dealers

*Astra Zeneca fell 0.57% on news that its US coronavirus trials have been halted by the FDA because of the UK side effects reported last month. Given the bad news this is a mild drop for AZN. It rose 2.2% in Britain after being rated buy by Berenberg along with GSK, BMY, and Swiss Novartis (NVS).

*Teva initially rose 2.68% at the opening to $9.25. Then someone realized that this weekend sees a Jewish holiday, Sukkoth, the Feast of Booths, to shut the Tel Aviv market again for 3 days (Friday through Sunday.) So TEVA fell back and is now back at $8.96, down 0.6%..

*However high-flying Israeli stock Compugen kept its gain of 3.6%. CGEN trades mostly here.

*Zymeworks fell 4.65% ZYME is a maker of dual attack cancer drugs which has been rocketing up.

*Dr. Reddy's launched a generic of Sensipor, cinacalcet, to treat secondary hyperthyroidism in patients with kidney disease. RDY is up a bit.

*Swiss Roche was upped to add by Alpha Value analysts, from equal weight. RHHBY is up 0.23%.

*Spanish Grifols was upped to equal weight from sell by Citigroup at $17.35. It fell. GRFS bought 12 Green Cross's plasma fractionation and plasma plants in the US Canada. It finds antibodies and may gain from AZN delays. The Moderna vaccine stimulates antibodies which are tested for in the trials. Its FDA approvals are expected Nov. 25 so it will not have a big lead.

Greens

*Ormat is setting up a major program to sell its waterfall systems for storage of energy to California which desperately needs this. The Israeli firm developed it to store geothermal energy to fill in when the sun is not shining or the wind not blowing in Nevada and abroad. But California is an obvious place to sell the storage system without geothermal support. You can push any kind of electricity into the waterfall. ORA stock is up 1.8% to $60.11 on the news. It is Israeli controlled and the move was at low volumes.

*Canadian Solar (CSIQ) rose 2.8% here today, hitting $36.08. It was tipped by Max Deml of Oekoinvest in Vienna, with whom we trade ideas.

*Norway's Tomra Systems TMRAY is up 99 cents, 2.3% today. It makes bottle recyclers and sorting machines.

Tech & Tel

*Multichoice (MCHOY) rose anoher 5.6% today. It sells cellphones and ads in Africa.

*Tower Semiconductor, TSEM, rose ~2% despite (or because of?) Sukkoth. It also trades mostly here.

*Vodafone replaced its Portuguese head of Spanish operations, Antonio Coimbra, with a Briton, Colman Deegan. The VOD stock fell over 1%.

*CAE of Canada, tipped by Patti the Biotech maven, rose 5.7% after the pilot training firm launched a new digital platform called Airside. It was upped by Bank of Montreal to outperform from neutral with a C$25 target price (vs C$23.)

*Finnish Nokia fell 2.52% in London today but we are more enthusiastic and NOK is only down 1.5%. This despite a ban on Huawei in Germany.

*Swedish Ericsson fell 1.93% to $10.68 in sympathy. ERIC.

*A stock traded rarely, Renishaw, maker of precise measurement systems, rose 20.42% today, a new high for 2020. RSNHF was recommended by Martin Ferrera who has been joined by Berenberg (brokers). It suspended its 2019 divvie until now. At $75.79 is our winner mainly as UK trading fell.

*Bonus stock Qualcomm, QCOM, it up another 0.7% on big volume (for a stock calling $120/sh.

Oil Patch

*Schlumberger Ltd SLB fell another 2.51% to $15.17. I think it is in buy range. With outages in Britain and Japan, however, I am cautious. It will report on its Q3 on the 16^th.

*Having gained yesterday in London for cutting jobs and expenses, Royal Dutch Shell B RDS-B shares fell 3.3%. Again too much.

*BP fired 4 Chinese oil traders for “improper use of WeChat”. The stock fell 3.35%.

A Warning

However tempting it may be to buy Japanese stocks which are down because of the outage, leave this to the professionals. Japan Small Cap, JOF, is down 0.92%. Goldman Sachs Active Beta Japan ETF, GSJY, is down 0.33%.

*This applies particularly to the Berkshire Hathaway Japanese finance firms Mitsubishi (MSBHF) and Sumitomo Mitsui (SMFG).

*With Japan down, NTT Docomo, DCMYY, did not trade today. Do not trade Japanese stocks today.