Another day, another attempt to resume my blogs, after a technical error caused the site to go down Tuesday. I tried to get hold of my local techie but there were so many other site issues that he will not be able to visit until late today. I think I have got the clunker, my old desktop computer, back in clover while the laptops are out of commission. There is a terrible irony in the way the web works now.

While the world looked on the crackdown in Myanmar with horror, a Japanese state-financed hotel paid dividends to a major owner, the military junta of former Burma.

Poor Germany was unable to find a local president for market regulator Bafra, heavily compromised by recent scandals. It hired the Briton Mark Branson who used to run the Swiss one.

Boris Johnson, British Prime Minister, today claimed that its Covid-19 successes in inoculation of its population were the result of “greed and capitalism”. This is a backdoor criticism of the European Union Britain is no longer part of.

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There is a lot more news on the virus. India has found a new “double mutation” in the state of Maharashtra. In part because of this, it is stopping exports from the Serum Institute of India of vaccines going to other countries. Virus nationalism is on the rise also in Europe where newly discovered surplus jabs found in Italy are going to be kept from foreigners and given to Belgians. Now for our company news, starting with the virus and pharma stocks:

Pharma

*The share in focus both in India and in Italy is from Astra Zeneca and Oxford University. It had licensed Serum Institute of India to make its jab now being kept in India. The 29 mn Italian inoculations just found were from AZN, so nationalism will keep the jabs in the shortage hit European Union, Belgium.

AZN is being hauled over the coals for using out-of-date data to get permissions for sales in the US. AZN was rated “sell” yesterday by Goldman Sachs and US legal eagles seek big shareholders in US-listed GSK to sue the UK firm. The share was down 1.13% today but now is off 0.6%.

*Meanwhile a different scandal is hurting the other British drug major, Glaxo. GSK shares lost 0.11% of their value hereafter the company fired former Trump vaccine supremo Moncef Slaoui for allegedly engaging in “totally unacceptable harassment” of women at the firm, which moreover is headed by a woman. Mr. Slaoui is American-educated and a citizen but was born in Morocco. He had been a role model for Muslims.

*Compugen, the Israeli firm, rose 0.2% today. CGEN had been suffering from profit-taking but has been inching up all week.

*Grifols of Spain, a specialist in plasma, is our best performer in drugs this week. GRFS is doing a buyback and gained 1.6% today.

Energy

*The Suez Canal is nearly unblocked and stockpiles are high, with WTI supplies at 1.9 mn barrels, a 5^th week with oversupply rising. Gasoline and distillate also is in surplus. So the price of oil is down.

*The usual suspects, however, are up, as the surplus mostly comes from smaller companies. BP plc gained 3.01%; Royal Dutch Shell B (RDS-B) rose 2.37%; and Schlumberger Ltd, 3.52%. SLB won the approval of a $480 mn contract for the Basra field from the Iraq government.

*Azure Power AZRE is up 2.5% today after the Mauritius company making solar panels was written up by Barron's. It was called Indian, which is wrong, and no mention was made of its majority shareholders, the IFC private enterprise arm of the World Bank, and the Caisse de Dépôts retirement fund of Quebec. I wrote to the writer with a correction but of course, we are happy with the price jump.

*Energy Fuels, UUUU, which is stockpiling uranium but extracting rare earths from the ore, rose 1.7% to $6.08, a new high for the Canada small-cap. Its target price was raised to $6.5 today by Roth Capital, but I am not sure if the TP is in US or Canadian dollars. The price quoted is in US money.

*Earthstone Energy shares are up 200% YTD which is nice, but profit-taking means ESTE is down from a 250% gain earlier this month.

*A calm German ute, Eon SE is up while the French waterworks and sewage ones do battle,

Suez vs Veolia. VEOEY. EONGY is an electricity supplier, working in Europe and beyond.

Industrials

*Kennedy-Wilson is easily my best performing stock lately, a US real estate funder. KW.

*Chinese automaker NIO lost 8.1% on the hostile outcome from the Alaska meeting with the new US Secretary of State, in the wake of Tesla. It opened down only 4.45% because of Li Autos creating an up-market vehicle for the Chinese. We sold most of our shares in NIO earlier this year but as it drops I am considering buying back—but not yet. China is using anti-trust to control its companies.

*Antofagasta, miner of copper in Chile but British rose 4.86%. ANFGF was downgraded to underweight by Morgan Stanley but the market didn't listen today

*My pick for 2021, Cosan of Brazil, with a new ticker symbol, CSAN, and a bunch of bonus shares added because of its consolidation, is doing well. The gains are hard to figure, however, given the higher number of shares we now own without having had to pay for them. The price is $16.66 now.

*Today's best sector is cement where the Biden Administration will get the raw materials for its infrastructure push. We have two players both of which are cutting carbon emissions, and both of which have US ADRs because they sell a lot here. Cemex CX of Mexico is up 2.43% today while CRH of Ireland is up 2.6%. They gained 2.42% and 1.5% yesterday. Both are better than their home markets because Mexico is seeing populist attacks on companies gaining from energy subsidies (like Grupo Bimbo, GRBMF by President AMLO) and CRH is delisting in London because it is Irish and belongs to the EU.

Tech & Tel

*Israeli Magal Security, sold, is up after changing its ticker symbol to ID. Bubble. As expected, Benjamin Netanyahu has the largest number of votes but he cannot take the Prime Ministership without help from other parties, some of which think he should be indicted for fraud over household expenses double-billed to Israel. MAGS.

*Reuters warns that Tencent, TCEHY, is under investigation by Chinese trust-busters who are focusing on Internet companies to prevent dissidents from getting together. I hope this will give our Naspers and Prosus more independent valuations. NPSNY and PROSY as proxies for TCHEY is over.

*Internet issues yesterday kept my blog from going out and I wanted to again point out that Abhimanyu Sisodia's Japanese pick Nintendo has upgraded its switch panel to work on a TV using a chip from Nvidia. Abhimanyu held out for NTDOY despite our Japan-based Chris Loew negativism.

*Coupang, CPNG, the Korean Amazon is was up again at the opening. I bought it because we did well with our Argentina version of Amazon, Mercado Libre, MELI. Not all markets respond the way Americans do to online marketing and finance, hence my taste for locals.

Finance

*Mitsubishi (MUFG) and Sumitomo (SMFG) are lower for a Japanese reason: they reported poor earnings in the Q3 fiscal results but did not increase their guidance for Q4 which had already begun because the results were not much better. This I reported yesterday in the blog which many did not receive.

*Lazard (LAZ) is up another 1.7% today. It is operating as a fund of closed-end funds in the USA, which means it doesn't have to fully staff with analysts, copying the tactic used by the City of London, which until very recently could not be bought in the USA by retail investors. LAZ also has a closed-end fund which I added to the portfolio of our holdings because my recommendation of the parent was not clear according to a long-time smart reader.