After robot dogs and robot vacuum cleaners, how about a robot fund manager?

The latest exchange traded fund investing (ETF) lure is the “Robo”, an automated wealth management system running algorithms. You fill out a form to show your personality traits (like ones used at dating sites.) Then the robo(t) figures out which ETFs “complement” you.

Robo will buy you a portfolio (which also can be an individual retirement account). Robo will automatically track it, and also rebalance if one of your holdings goes up or down too far. Rebalancing will cost you after year one. To learn more, contact the (human) promoters of New Kapitall Holdings LLC which collects a commission for every signup delivered to brokerage Apex Clearing Corp. Apex will start collecting fees from its human customers only in 2016. Only humans may open an account and they have to be US residents.

Today's news is from Japan, The Netherlands, Britain, Canada, Israel, India, Denmark, and Texas, and is mostly bad. I am travelling and will not be updating the tables this weekend. Two grandchildren are performing with the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra (youth division.)

• Noble Energy, the partner of Delek Group in two major Israeli offshore gasfields, has halted all investments because of the uncertain regulatory environment, according to NBL CEO David Stover. He was objecting to pressure on the Texas firm and DGRLY to exit the currently producing Tamar field in order to be allowed to develop the Leviathan field. This demand from the Israeli Antitrust Agency claims the two firms had created an illegal cartel. The agency head, Prof. David Gilo, on Dec. 23 threw out an earlier settlement under which the partners sold off two less important fields, essentially ending NBL talks with Egypt and Jordan to supply gas. Mr. Stover confirmed that the impasse with Israel has prevented potential sales of 250 mn cu ft/d to Egypt using an existing trans-Sinai pipeline.

DLGRY is down 4.3% in US trading; Tel Aviv is closed Fridays.

• Its target, Eurasia Drilling, says that it cannot be bought by Schlumberger after all, unless the Russian Federal Anti-Monopoly Service gives a green light. And that will take longer than anticipated when SLB offered to pay $1.7 bn for 45.7% of the arctic drilling service company, and eventually to buy 100%. SLB is Dutch.

• Our Gemalto stock is reported in The Intercept, a specialist website, to have produced SIM cards which in 2010-11 were hacked by spies from Western intelligence agencies to illicitly collect data from users' mobile phones. They did not need a warrant to tap phones from many US wireless networks. The website charges came from documents provided by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. GTOMY, the largest producer of SIM cards, said it had no prior knowledge of the phone hacking and was investigating using all necessary resources to find out if there was a security breach.

GTOMY can reconfigure smart cards remotely and the cost of repairing the breach might be low in money, however high in reputation terms. Hacking by the US NSA or Britain's Govt Communications Agency also is illegal under UK and EU data protection laws. There is a risk that some GTOMY engineers were complicit.

Our reporter who recommended Dutch Gemalto, Harry Geisel, wrote that this was a risk “not considered.” He advises that we “hang in there”. GTOMY is off 4.4% in US trading on the digital disaster.

• Now for some good news. Chris Loew updates us on ShinMaywa Industries (JP:7224) which he recommended because it hit a new 2-yr high and is up nearly 40% from our buy price (in yen):

Its planned export to India of 12 US-2i amphibious planes will be Japan's first post-war arms export sale, and it is being fast-tracked by both Tokyo and New Delhi and was included in the Indian defense budget. Some modifications in the specs aim to make it look less military. Shin also makes US-2's for Japan's self-defense forces and a fire-fighting version sold to the US.

Its Q3 report showed that the biggest aircraft contributor to profits was wing spars for the 787 Boeing. With the India deal, this pushed up aircraft sales 23% year-on-year and operating profits up 5.1%.

However, garbage trucks are Shin's most profitable line, and its special-purpose trucks also includes vehicles for construction and forestry industries. Trucks earnings rose 50.7% y/o/y to double what it made from aviation, despite almost flat sales. Shin is also a big exporter of highly efficient submersible pumps, wire processing machinery, and environmental products where it lost money. It made it up with hydraulic auto-stacking parking systems needed in crowded Japan [VL: and NYC] but not a big export earner. As Japanese population declines this market may shrink.

Overall y/o/y quarterly net rose 32.6%. I see no reason to fear a reversal despite the current high Japanese stock market. Let's ride this vehicle stock a little longer.

• Novo Nordisk had positive results with its new oral semaglutide in phase II trials against a placebo and a weekly injection of the drug, in 600 people with type 2 diabetes treated for 6 months. The oral treated patients achieved its primary endpoint of raising HbA1c (a diabetes treatment marker, glycated hemoglobin) at levels higher by a tenth to a third, highest at the high dosage. This was the primary endpoint of the trial.

Those given the highest daily does (40 mg) also matched the weight loss achieved by those who were injected with the drug, of losing a mean 6.5 kilograms in weight, over 14 lbs. Now the Danish company plans to apply to proceed to Phase III trials. NVO is up on the news. The weight loss data are highly significant as this is a greater unmet need than easy diabetes treatment.

• Despite hopes, BP failed to get US District Judge Carol Barbier to cap the liabilities over the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, taking the prosecutors' side. This means the total fine could reach $13.7 bn under the US Clean Water Act rather than be under $9.57 bn.

• Martin Ferera notes that the proposed new Canadian tax break for gas pipelines and LNG facilities, treating them as manufacturing plants for depreciation, will not help Veresen which operates in US West Coast states, not in British Columbia. But he thinks it shows that competition will need incentives FCGYF did not require to build its mini-Cushing West Coast Hub which collects gas from both US and Canadian fields. Until a partner signs up for its LNG plant we cannot be sure it really has a competitive advantage, beyond first to move at least.

• Another Martin pick, Australia's Origin Energy, reported a money-losing FY H1 results yesterday. OGFGF was hit by losing a tax break Down Under and by its revaluation of its US$-denominated debt in lower A$s. It also is producing more coal seam gas domestically which raises its costs, in the run up to the launch of a giant export facility for the gas which cut its output of cheaper conventional liquified petroleum gas to supply its utility customers.

Its losses in the half amount to A$25 mn (under US$20 mn.) However, excluding exceptionals, underlying profit was off 9% to A$346 mn, which missed WSJ forecasts of $356 mn.

By midyear 2015, when AP LNG begins operating in Queensland to export liquefied gas to China for dollars, the imbalance between OGFGF debt and earnings should right itself . Then it will stop supplying domestic customers with coal seam gas. Moody's called the weak half “within expectations” but is still reviewing for a possible downgrade. Origin's unchanged dividend of 25 Oz cents brings its yield to 3.9%, but it did not earn this money in H1. OGFGF is a risky yield stock.

• Santander will ease conditions for opening US checking and savings accounts to enable New Yorkers to do so more easily. The state Atty. General Eric Schneiderman went after bank screening procedures (using consumer reporting agency ChexSystems) which prevent lower income applicants from opening accounts, leaving them at the mercy of check-cashing bandits. SAN is popular with Hispanics and used its own name in Puerto Rico for decades before also rebranding its mainland branches.

• Jefferies International, a broker, while rating GlaxoSmithKline a hold, has raised its GSK target price to £14.20 from £13.50.

Fund notes: Bill Gross sold another $3.022 mn in shares of closed-end Pimco Dynamic Income Fund and another $831.520 in shares of Pimco Corporate and Income Opportunity Fund this week. Mr Gross left the Pimco in late Aug. and the delay was probably for tax reasons and doesn't reflect fund performance. Mr. Gross accounts for about half the current outflow from Pimco closed-end funds and there may be similar impact on the open-end ones.

But the outflow is hurting Allianz (AZSEY), the German insurance company which owns Pimco alongside its employees. Separately, chief economist Paul McCulley who returned to Pimco last May at Gross's urging after the departure of Mohammed El-Erian, will leave Feb. 28 to be replaced by German-born Joachim Feis, hired from Morgan Stanley. Separately, Pimco said it will cut its exposure to US Treasury bonds, a feature of the Gross investment strategy.