On Saturday night I was treated to a performance at the Richard Rogers Theater of Hamilton. It was weird, with a racially mixed cast all dressed in 18^th century costumes and uniforms, singing hip-hop, a musical anachronism. I found myself looking forward to the commentary by George III who periodically appeared in his crimson robe and crown, but I realize now that he clicked with me because I can remember Beatlemania from my youth.

A key takeaway from the play: it is a pity that Alexander Hamilton didn't have a personal lawyer like Trump's Michael Cohen, who cleans up his messes with money and mistresses. Had there been a Cohen handy Hamilton would not have had to duel over his honesty with Aaron Burr.

Perhaps that is why the theater was packed.. My family group sat on the last row of the highest balcony at seats which were far from cheap. Before the performance and during the intermissions, the lighting man climbed up an down a metal ladder behind my seat. He remarked that his was the most important job in the performance—and indeed he did better than the sound man whose higher notes were drowned out by bass and bangs. Since my daughter has a Yale Drama School degree in lighting design we were all very pleased at this guy's sense of his own importance.

Anachronisms can be useful. My volunteer work is being made marginally less boring by the fact that the Brazilian-born head of our local Sutton Area Community speaks always of “the Third Avenue” rather than dropping the article. I thought it was a trace of Portuguese but it turns out he is modeling his usage on Henry James's Washington Square. He also goes to Latin Mass. I will adopt his usage for Third Avenue but not his religion.

The Dow was up on Monday but it may only be a respite. Retail sales are up. Foreign stocks were down as the dollar is listlessly falling against respectable currencies for some reason related to the weak dollar, something Jefferson promoted and Hamilton opposed.

The allegedly “failing” New York Times and New Yorker shared 3 Pulitzer prizes on Monday, on their coverage of sexual harassment and Me-too. This bodes ill for POTUS.

Trouble

*Ecopetrol is delisting from the NYSE with effect April 27. This appears to be because it ended the line of its Spanish sub on which the EC listing was based. SELL. You don't want to have to trade in Bogota, Cali, or Medillin! I sold at $21.1238/sh as the stock fell 2% earlier this week. As it is near its year's high of $22.48 it is a good time to exit. The NYSE has suspended trading with effect from Friday. It also lost altitude because of the oil price falling but we made nearly 30% profit on our holding.

Pharmaceuticals and Healthcare

*Shire Pharma on Monday agreed to sell its oncology business to Servier for the equivalent of $2.4 bn, in part to stop the potential bid for SHPG of Ireland by Japanese Takeda. TKPYY cited its cancer drugs as one reason to bid for Shire. SHPG actually rose on Monday on the news but fell from its opening at $156.2/sh. Invesco of the UK owns 1% of Shire according to a new SEC filing.

*Roche got FDA clearance for its Cobas 6800/8800 CT/NG tests for sexually transmitted disease using urine specimens, swabs, and cervical smears to look for chlamydia, gonorrhea and other sexual plagues with a total time lapse of only 3 hours max if those being tested are in a clinical setting, which they often avoid. Viral load tests for potential donors would help particularly for people without symptoms. [The first tests should be on the two Russian prostitutes who may or may not have pee'd on each other according to in the presence of Donald Trump according to A Higher Loyalty by former FBI director James Comey. We know he doesn't use condoms from “Stormy Daniels”.

Roche also got breakthrough status for its Balovaptan to treat autism by modulating the vasopressin hormone which may be a target. RG7314 blocks the V1a vasopressin receptor and is in phase II trials. It is a neuropeptide delivered by a nasal spray. The trial will enroll 100 patients and report in 2022. Roche failed with an earlier attempt using oxytocin, a different neuropeptide, to improve social function as it didn't work in adult men with autism. The children (usually boys) to receive Vasopressin will be tested for low levels of the neuropeptide before enrollment.

RHHBY will also present data on this drug and Ocrevus (ocrelizumab) at the American Academy of Neurology conference next weekend. The drug is used for multiple sclerosis and may also help with Alzheimer's, Huntington's, spinal muscular atrophy, and Duchenne muscular dystrophy.

Roche is still in limbo over its phase III Modul study a drug for Exelixis (EXEL, a bonus stock) to treat colorectal cancer with Tecetriq and a MEK inhibitor Cotellic, because 5 patients died. Against other cancers the Tecentriq trials are continuing. To resume Modul will require a green light from the independent monitoring board. I have no idea if it will come or if the trial will be shut in, but 4 of the deaths seem to be unrelated to Cotellic.

*Credit Suisse reports that GlaxoSmithKline increased its weekly sales of both of its major respiratory prescription drugs last week, Anoro for asthma and Breo for chronic obstructive lung disease.It looks like the GSK strategic partnership with Adaptimmuneover the latter's MAFE and MAGE-SPEAR T-cell therapy is gaining traction/ ADAP plc is presenting several papers at the American Association for Cancer Research Congress in Chicago on pre-trial searches for an antigen in non-small cell lung cancers. Zacks cut its rating for GSK of Britain to hold from buy.

*CS also reports that Teva sales of 3x/wk dosage Copaxone fell 2.5% so far in April, and now accounts for about 15% of sales while generic glatiramer acetate has 11% of the market. This matters more than the strike threats of the Israeli Histadrut for TEVA's future. TEVA also won an appeals court ruling against the Maryland drug price-gouging law along with other drugmakers, as it was called unconstitutional by interfering with interstate commerce. You cannot impose price ceilings in Maryland without doing so in Delaware, Virginia, or Washington DC. More interesting law cases found below.

*Zacks upgraded Novo Nordisk to held from sell. NVO is Danish.

*Barclays dropped coverage of Mazor Robotics, MZOR, the Israeli surgery assistance software firm.

*Credit Suisse reports that GlaxoSmithKline increased its weekly sales of both of its major respiratory prescription drugs last week, Anoro for asthma and Breo for chronic obstructive lung disease. Zacks cut its rating for GSK of Britain to hold from buy. It looks like the GSK strategic partnership with Adaptimmune over the latter's MAFE and MAGE-SPEAR T-cell therapy is gaining traction/ ADAP plc is presenting several papers at the American Association for Cancer Research Congress in Chicago on pre-trial searches for an antigen in non-small cell lung cancers.

*Bristol Myers will use DNA sequencing systems from Illumina to sort out those undergoing cancer drug trials by finding biomarkers for the patients likely to benefit. This is a key breakthrough in cancer trials. ILMN is a bonus stock which Patti has written about here. I own it and BMY which rose after the Friday close but both fell back on Monday.

Tech & Tel

*Saber-rattling boosted CAE which will have to train pilots for missions around the Middle East if there are to be more of them.

Patti the Biotech maven reports that the Canadian firm will be very busy presenting its aviation simulators around the world this month. CAE signed a key deal with US consortium WorldPoint, which offers healthcare training on behalf of the American Heart Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, to add CAE Juno products to the mannikins and curriculum the US group provides to the USA, Latin America, and Dubai. CAE is not just training pilots for military and civil aviation.

*Questions about Tencent's gains from selling assets and tax rebates were cited by Hassan Rizvi, CFA, in a note on seekingalpha.com. He is a new contributor and cited TCEHY net being boosted by one-offs like selling subs, a tax rebate, and subsidies for investing. Absent these the Hong Kong share would have fallen more than a third below consensus forecasts. Operating margins also should not be goosed up by interest income ad forex gains. He also argues that WeChat growth is slackening and with it gross margins. He expects at very least that the share will fall to 33x earnings from its current 36x level, based on history, not at $51 and change but ~$47.

*Schlumberger Ltd, incorporated in the Dutch Antilles, is pleading before the US Supreme Court for keeping fines for violations of its Western Geco patent rights overseas. Its target is ION Geophysics which also has an office in Houston, TX, which violated SLB intellectual property over offshore searches for oil and gas in foreign waters. A lower court awarded SLB $93.4 mn for lost profits from the infringement but a district court denied it the payment. Now the Supremes get to decide if US patent violations overseas can be used to claim damages in the USA, according to Reuters. The limits of extraterritoriality are a key problem in international law and the Administration has backed SLB in this case.

[I have a distant cousin, Lassa Lawrence Oppenheim, born in Windecken, Germany, who in the early 20th century defined extraterritoriality law. While trained in German Jura he was the Whewell Professor of International law at Cambridge University in England and his book, International Law: A Treatise, is still in print, now by Kindle. I expect his heirs are not getting royalties.]

*Autoliv, the Swedish airbag and electronics safety firm, was raised to a buy by Berenberg and its target price upped to $145 from $110. ALV was back near its all-time high on Monday as a result but above the target price at $151.69.

*Vodafone and Idea Cellular await regulatory approval in India for their merger which will result in about 5000 locals becoming redundant while the two firms will become No. 1 in India, ahead of Reliance Jeo. We reported last Friday on the closeness of the Modi govt with Reliance in military production. This is not about saving jobs for the boys, but to help Mukesh Ambani, the head of Reliance, whom the BJP supports also at the expense of Indian rivals like Tata Teleservice. This note is not by Abhimanyu Sisodia but he tipped us off about the linkage between the PM and India's richest Nawab Friday.

*Magal Security Systems was upgraded to buy from hold by Columbine Capital on Monday. It changed CEO last week and this is the first reaction. MAGS is Israeli.

*Toray was dropped from Zacks's coverage list Friday. The Japanese firm is dropped every other week.

*Finnish Nokia and KDDI of Japan tested a vehicle-to-everything link using low latency 4G LTE broadasts to achieve vehicle-to-vehiclee connectivity to cover emergencies, as well as allow automated navigation in normal or non-driver uses of the system. Geeky but important.

*Zacks earlier this week, have put a sell on BCE, the Canada telco. These recommendations are based on weekly rankings by the Chicago firm's analysts and will only lead to tears and costly over-trading if you follow them. Brokerages want you to overtrade and send this stuff out.

Food, Finance, & Industry

*Pimco, a sub of Germany's Allianz SE, is behind the SEC recommendation that big-ticket bond trades worth over $10 mn does not have to be reported for 48 hours so they can close without the market reacting. The US bond market is already hiding too much price information from smaller investors and smaller funds and this is supposed to stop “predatory trading” according to Pimco's rep on the SEC bond advisory committee, Mihir Worah. [I am not sure if this is why Columbine Capital raised AZSEY to buy from hold on Monday. So far in April there have been several news items about AZSEY which have been withdrawn by Reuters.]

*Greencore was rated buy by Whitman Howard UK brokers with a target price of GBX 310 (about $4.4) after it lost its Gerry Murphy, hired by Burberry, the raincoat fashion house. British brokers like GNCGY in part because it is euro- and dollar-earning.

*Another UK small cap Virgin Money was upgraded by analysts at Barclays Bank from hold to overweight with a target price upped to GBX 360 from 320.

*Nutrien created a new global branded retailing system to be set up in Canada and the US before eventually going global, to be called NTR Ag Solutions. NTR is the company which now owns former Potash and Agrium in Canada. AGU contributed the garden shops and retail side.

*BP plc was dropped to hold from buy by Ford Equity Research.

*Switzerland's pump-maker Sulzer is now off the US sanctions list having bought back enough shares from Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg to end his control of the company. The Swiss are good at this sort of thing. 

*Vale output of iron ore dropped 4.9% this year vs last as the Brazilian miner switched away from lower grade ore to boost output of the up-Amazon Carajas and SS11D premium grade with a ferrous content of 64.4%. This was because last summer management decided to position VALE as a premium producer and is no reason for worry. Vale also reaffirmed its guidance of 390 million tonnes output for the full year.

*Fellow Brazilian Cosan will report its Q1 results in English and Portuguese on May 11. I will cover CZZ from London.

Funds

*Fibra Uno will hold its conference call April 27.