I am refusing to write about the latest bearishness of stock markets over fear of a trade war. China and Trump are both making big threats as a negotiating strategy. This will go on for months and we have to examine other parts of the stock market.

Renaissance Research is recommending a global bank stock I am familiar with, HSBC Holdings, which despite its name standing for Hong Kong & Shanghai Bank, is in fact UK-based. I am familiar with it because via a series of takeovers it wound up as the owner of our mortgage, now repaid. We got a price break on the interest rate charged from what was then Williamburgh Savings Bank, a leader in lending on NYC cooperative apartments, if we opened a check account, Since another bank, Manufacturer's Hanover, deposited payrolls from my husband's employer, I had to open an account to get the mortgage break. Both Manny Hanny and WSB no longer exist, having been acquired by JPMorgan and HSBC respectively. And our mortgage has been repaid.

My problems with HSBC are multiple. My credit card account was hacked not once, but twice in the last decade by an insider at my branch who went shopping at Target. Then my checking account was also considered at risk and I had to get a new one. More recently I have been driven nuts by the procedure for getting a key-chain fob which generates a changing secret code enabling me to get into my account as I need to do every Sunday to produce our tables. (My global bonds are held in my HSBC account, not with my broker.)

These devices gum up and refuse to provide a code. So the bank sends me another and I have to program it with help from the bank's tech team. Since problems usually arise on Sunday I wind up communicating with exotic folks from India or the Philippines, and they have problems sending one-time passwords to my email account. My cellphone doesn't work in my office because there is a bridge outside the window.

When a new device cannot be coded by the Asian hands, it is simply deactivated and killed. Then HSBC sends me a new device and the process starts again. I am expecting my third device for 2018. I and my account manager here think this process needs to be improved and it plainly aggravates customers and costs the bank money for the discarded devices. But there is no way to change the process.

Of course there are advantages to using a very global bank. In 2004 when Air France lost my baggage en route to India I was able to buy enough clothes and underwear to remain decent in the pre-monsoon zone while the airline dithered and delayed paying me anything. I only got my baggage back when we were in the USA.

However when the US Diebold ATM fails to work—which happens a couple of times a year—the global help desk is no help, because only US tech support people can get the repair done during normal working hours. Having access by phone or internet to someone who cannot arrange for me to get some liquid money from my account until the next US workday is slim comfort. The bank apparently doesn't trust its help desk enough to let them activate an ATM.

There are other disadvantages from international banking. About five years ago when we were in Paris I was unable to get enough cash from the local branch of HSBC to go to our favorite restaurant which doesn't accept credit cards, Le Hangar. We later learned HSBC's French CCF network had been locked down because some of its staffers were helping French clients move their money into secret Swiss bank accounts. The Swiss are still trying to nab the HSBC whistle-blower. So given its ethics, inefficiency, and vulnerability to hacking, I'm not buying NYSE-HSBC stock.

You might be interested to know why this Renaissance person likes HSBC. First of all it yields 5.4%, a nice bit of change, boosted by the share underperforming. Secondly, he or she thinks HSBC has an edge as a potential part of a Saudi Aramco IPO—presumably if it is partly placed in Hong Kong, where HSBC and its sub Hang Seng Bank are major players.

But he or she also cheers on HSBC's decision to close its small and expensive branch networks in Malta, Bermuda, and Uruguay. I have used the Bermuda HSBC ATM, and Bermuda and Uruguay are tourist destinations. But all three countries where HSBC is exiting are also well-known tax havens, which may have something to do with the shut-ins.

Internets

The Hong Kong outfit gaining from a pending India deal, by Walmart, is Tencent which owns a stake in the US giant's target, Flipkart, the Indian e-commerce alternative to Amazon. Other owners of Flipkart include South African media-cum-internet firm Naspers, NPSNY, which owns 31.2% of TCEHY and its own pile of FLIP stock. Also likely to gain from a FLIP bid are Softbank and Microsoft. One of our writers pitched Softbank but I got scared. I do own Microsoft.

There is only one woman on the board of Autoliv, proving that it is an American rather than a Swedish company, Xiaozhi Lu, who is the former chief engineer at GM China. ALV's rump passive safety side (when electronics is spun off to shareholders) expects to boost its sales to $10 billion by 2020, from about $6 billion last year, mainly from sale of more safety components per vehicle to growth markets like China (and India.)

Berenberg Capital Markets put a sell on Infosys. Indian INFY is being kept from using its global staff to replace US tech support. We told you first.

Pharma

After Takeda held a press conference spelling out its ability to buy Shire Pharma, analysts from Sanford Bernstein now expect a bid after the Japanese firm said it was “willing to push its debt higher” in order to seal the deal. Bernstein’s Wimal Kapadia wrote he thinks a bid is now “more likely than not.” SHPG is in trouble because of hemophilia competition from Roche and an empty cash position later paying too much for Baxalta. Of course the key question is how high Takeda will go. Kapadia thinks, after a survey by Bernstein, that Shire shareholders want £42 or $175/sh to start talking and £45 or $190 to sing. We also want cash and less than half our price in Takeda shares.

Kapadia says Takeda can probably get a deal if it goes to 5x leverage and issues more Japanese shares, keeping former Shire-owners in a minority, important in Japan. Takeda is also selling its Brazil pharma unit, Multilab Indústria e Comércio de Produtos Farmacêuticos, according to Reuters, for cash. Shire is Irish with its prime listing in London which means something has to be done before Brexit.

After a phase I trial of only 5 patients,Danish Novo Nordisk signed up to license a sickle cell disease drug from EpiDestiny worth $400 million. It gives NVO world rights to EP101, an epigenetic treatment about to start phase II. Researchers at the Cleveland Clinic and the University of Illinois began testing an oral combo of tetrahydrouridine and decitabine in 2012. A recent 8-wk trial linked the combo to higher levels of fetal hemoglobin, a biomarker that correlates to better sickle cell outcome. Sickle cell disease is hereditary and much more prevalent among those of African heritage than Americans of other races. Another similar disease afflicts people of Mediterranean background, called beta-thalassemia. NVO is also getting a license for beta-thalassemia.

EPI01 uses two drugs to inhibit DNMT1, an enzyme that epigenetically silences fetal hemoglobin, which improves outcomes in sickle cell patients by interfering with the polymerization of mutated sickle hemoglobin. With decitabine inhibiting DNMT1, thereby increasing fetal hemoglobin, outlooks should improve. However another human enzyme inactivates decitabine, why it is combined with with tetrahydrouridine, a CDA inhibitor that keeps decitabine levels high enough for the drug to take effect. EpiDestiny is keeping rights to develop the drug in cancer indications.

Miners

VALE fell over fear of tariffs on Chinese steel. This daily switch in outlook between bulls and bears is so boring I will stop covering it.

MMC Norilsk Nickel has finally been targeted by US anti-Putin measures. On April 6 Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin revealed sanctions against seven Russian tycoons, 12 companies and 17 senior government officials including key allies of the Russian president under a law Congress passed last year to retaliate against Moscow for meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Among those sanctioned is Oleg Deripaska, 50, who is a top holder of NILSY but doesn't control the company. Its shares fell 0.8%. Deripaska, 50 had links to Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort. He lives in London where NILSY is listed.

I continue to own the world's largest private sector uranium miner, a rare pure play on U3O8 despite its sales decline of 11% last year and losses. Cameco's SEC filing gives me hope for nuclear. CCJ supplied a “tour d'horizon” on nuclear demand. There has been a uranium glut since the 2011 Fukushima disaster as uranium power plans were shelved and existing operations shut in.

China continued to face excess capacity in the energy sector and first-of-a-kind reactor delays on its AP1000 and EPR reactors. It has not abandoned nuclear. Moreover, with Xi Jinping life-time president, China will continue with its ambitious nuclear growth. Bloomberg says nuclear installed capacity could increase tenfold between 2016 and 2050 to over 300 GW in China.

South Korea’s new government plans to phase-out nuclear power. However, a public panel voted to complete 2 reactors under construction that the government had previously suspended.

France's Macron government reaffirmed its commitment to reduce its reliance on nuclear by 2025, but later was forced to withdraw the target as unrealistic, postponing the reduction to 2030-2035. It is a major nuclear electricity producer.

Construction began on the first nuclear plants in Turkey and Bangladesh. Egypt signed a contract with Russia to build four reactors.

Saudi Arabia is prequalifying reactor vendors as it plans for its first nuclear power plant. It expects to, and plans to, install 17 marking progress on its ambitions to install 17 gigawatts of nuclear capacity by 2040.

Forced and premature shut-downs after Fukushima were emotional, but Japan is now safely bringing reactors online. This means Japanese restarts, successful commissioning of new reactors under construction, and continued development of new construction plans. Japanese utilities have now successfully navigated through the new, rigorous safety inspection process, with the restart of five reactors and another four to restart in 2018.

Having closed its nuclear plants, Germany acknowledged that it can no longer to meet its climate goals despite its substantial rollout of renewable energy with government subsidies.

Worldwide last year 4 new reactors connected to the grid. Currently there are 57 reactors under construction worldwide, most expected to come online in the next 3 years, if startups occur as planned.

There is a growing realization that global climate change goals require using to all non-carbon-emitting energy sources, including nuclear. The World Nuclear Association's target is 25% nuclear by 2050.

Costs can also be brought down if the research work now being done with GE and Hitachi of laser enrichment of uranium bears fruit. CCJ owns 24% of the venture.

I also like that CCJ at its May 16 AGM backs an end to the practice of seating the CEO on the board. I think boards cannot actively question management if the senior managers sits with them.

Energy

US energy independence requires sales to China from the shale sector. China could put tariffs or quotas on US petrochemicals, crude oil, and, liquefied natural gas to retaliate against Trump's threats to hit Chinese imports with tariffs. China is the biggest regional importer of US crude, as net US exports of oil more than doubled last year from 2016 to ~435,000 barrels per day last year. Chinese LNG imports were ~750 mn cu ft/day in Q4 2017.

Oppenheimer downgraded Ormat Technologies of Nevada to perform from outperform. ORA develops geothermal sites for electricity generation and also builds Viridity storage systems for solar and wind power to be able to get power from them at night or when the wind isn't blowing. Viridity is sold both to utilities and users.

ORA is majority Israeli owned but is a US company, hence a bonus stock. It part owns geothermal power stations in Kenya, Guadalupe (a French Caribbean Island), Honduras, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Chile, New Zealand, the Philippines, and Turkey and Indonesia.

Funds

SPDR Gold, GLD, is behaving as it should after renewed market volatility and bearishness over employment and trade. It is up 0.5%.

Mexican Equity & Income Fund lost money last FY (to Jan. 31 2018, when it ended) but soundly beat its index, the Mexbol, thanks to a 55% focus on high growth shares with lower p/e ratios. It also played news themes like energy reform and special situations. Maria Eugenia Pichardo remains the senior analysis person despite dropping the role of company president, and our MXE fund benefits from the Pichardo group's in-house prowess in Mexican investment management. She wrote in its SEC report today that PAM's internal code of ethics should give certainty to clients of its fund and other clients.