FRIDAY MARCH 26. Today is a hot news day and moreover an important one for my personal life, as I have to prepare for Passover, which begins tomorrow night. Because of the Sabbath, almost everything has to be done today when it is legal to work. Monday is the start of the Christian Holy Week culminating with Easter, so it is likely that the news load will be light as well as a Jewish holiday in the diaspora. But it is sure heavy today.

So naturally, it was this morning that I was trapped in the elevator in my apartment building and cut off from electricity in my office because my cleaning woman used a weak plug to connect the vacuum. Also, my husband's modem in our apartment used as a backup crashed and needs to be replaced.

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There will be no updates on our tables over the weekend, given the holiday, and there will be no blog on Monday either. Sorry about that, but at least my views about the stock market being bubble-prone so far has not hurt the index. My early blog yesterday put out because of issues with our internet turned out to be excessively gloomy as the market reversed. I suppose this is better than being very bullish and being proven wrong. But Pres. Biden certainly is considering tax hikes reversing Trump's cuts.

Today's February US personal income beat having lost only 7.1%. whereas the forecast was -7.3%.

EPFR which tracks fund flows said today that conflicting trends in Europe, back in lockdown, and fund flows into equities were down 85% in the month so far. Bond funds also saw very low inflows. The Cambridge, Mass. outfit publishes Global Navigator.

Drugmakers

*Teva rose a nifty 2.6% today when Tel Aviv was closed until Monday. (Israelis only celebrate one day for Passover, but the second one is obligatory in the rest of the world and many Orthodox Israelis still observe 2 days.) However, smaller Israeli drug shares are down: Bioline RX (BLRX), NovaCure (NVCR), Compugen (CGEN). This is because Netanyahu need coalition partners who may be socialists or Arabs. Enlivex, ENLV, our worst Israeli drug performer, actually rose 2.3% today because of contrarians. Friday is when they pounce. My worst performer is US Esperion, down 4%.

*Worst hit were small caps Abcellera Bio, ABCL, and Aurinia Pharma, AUPH, off 5.15% and 1.15%, and larger Zymeworks, ZYME, off 2.7%. All are Canadians facing corporate tax rises.

*Glaxo Smith Kline and Vir applied to the US FDA for emergency approval of Vir-7831 which treats early COVID-19. A top Vir executive sold 10% of his stake in the company, so maybe there will be issues getting licensed. GSK fell fractionally.

*Japanese Eisai, ESALY, gained 1.7% today; Takeda fell 0.8%. Cathie Woods sold TAK yesterday.

*She also sold Roche, RHHBY on Thursday but the Swiss company got EU validation for its Gilead sub's sacituzimab-govitecan-hlzy against triple-negative metastatic breast cancer in women who have failed two earlier therapies, according to Benzinga.

*Novo Nordisk of Denmark got a recommendation from the European Medical Authority for expanded approval for its obesity drug Savenda in EU countries to treat children aged 12 to 17, a group for which there is now little medication available. Full approval will take a few months, NVO told Dow Jones.

Finance

*Banco Santander of Spain is planning to buyout its Mexican sub, Institution de Banca Grupo Financiero Multiple Grupa Financiero SA. The first thing to notice is that Spanish (and other Latin languages) are unsure whether a bank is masculine or feminine. The second thing to notice is that giving a warning of a buyout is stupid. The offer is for $650 mn or so, in euros, the currency of Spain. So the Mexican stock soared by 19% today meaning SAN will have to pay more to buy out the bank.

It is also being pressed by the UK over failures in “know your customer rules” which may help crooks.

*The first Biden press conference pushed up bank yesterday and non-US outfits like Bank of Nova Scotia, BNS, also gained 1.4%. Banks are up because they will be able to buy back shares and boost dividends as of June 30. Higher yields (and lower prices) for T bonds also helped the financial sector.

*CBOE lost on the China drop as it said Weds it will buy Chi-X Asia Pacific for an undisclosed price.

*BofA-Merrill says $600 mn went out of gold last week, with hedge funds doing most of the selling over inflation risks. A lot went into TIPS. I cover a TIPS fund.

*Canadian General Fund, CGRIF, fell 2%. Weekends are when NAV is disclosed but this weekend will not be like other weekends.

*Hoegh LNG Partners LP fell another 0.26% despite it being the target of a buyout. We will lose the 8.75% divie. HMLP.

*US share Kennedy-Wilson continues to beat the foreigners. The US real estate group is redeeming its 5.875% note two years early and replacing they with new cheaper notes being issued as long as interest rates are week. KW gained about 13% this week and most of you don't own it because I don't cover US shares. It offers management and funding services to partners in the UK and Ireland for fees.

Industrials

*NIO stock crashed today by over 6.5% at the opening because of the China curse and because it announced suspension of deliveries of its electric-powered sports utility vehicle for 5 days because of a chip shortage. It is also shutting the plant where it is made. The share is now down about 25% from where it started 2021. It is being hurt by flat or higher interest rates because it needs to borrow as it earns no profits yet. It fell further to lose 6.7% by 11 am.

*Cosan lost 2.14% today. CSAN is now a regular traded stock which can be bought and sold. It is my pick for 2021 after it bought its offshore arms and increased the number of shares for owners. We got 29 new shares for every 100 old.

*After Roth Capital raised its target price for Energy Fuels Weds because of its rare earths moves, the US stock, UUUU, finally reacted, up 6.74% to $6.18. Too many newbies and too much internet outage kept this from happening earlier. Small caps are volatile and hard to track.

*Nutrien, Canada's vendor of seeds and plant food, is up 2.5%. We always have to eat. NTR.

*Antofagasta of Britain, owner of a copper mine in Chile, dodged a strike call there and ANFGF rose 6.16% to $23.45, slow but sure. Metals prices are also up because the Suez Canal is blocked.

*Johnson-Matthey, UK refiner and seller of precious metals, mostly from the platinum group, is down 1.9% today because a weekend looms. It is relatively safe from the impact of the Suez Canal blockage, as it is supplied from South Africa, and had been gaining all week.

*ABB of Switzerland yields 3.04% but the share goes ex-div Mar. 29. The stock gained 0.32% today on dividend seekers, hitting $31.18.

*Royal Dutch Shell (RDS-B) and BP plc rose ~2% in UK trading because the wretched Taiwanese container ship blocking the Suez Canal is singing “we shall not be moved.” This boosted the price of Brent crude oil to $63.26, up 2%. It had fallen earlier over fear of another COVID-19 round cutting demand.

Tech & Tel

*BofA-Merrill says $45.6 bn funds went out of tech into cash last week, the worst level in 10 months. Only 4.1bn went into stocks. The worst hit were Kane Shares China Internet ETF, KWEB, down 28%, and Investco China Tech ETF, CQQQ down 23%. Ark Innovation ETF, ARKK, lost even more, off 30%.

*Dutch Prosus, PROSY, gained 1.5% today. NPSNY, Naspers of South Africa gained 1.72%. Both are no longer viewed as proxies for Tencent of China by the smart money, but they revert on Friday. TCEHY is up 3.14% so this is not pure tracking. ARKK's Cathie Woods sold Tencent yesterday.