While I was doing my tables yesterday, I can honestly say it was a horror because my brokerage account locked me out although of course, I know my password and my eldest child's middle name. So I decided it must be because of Equifax having allowed access to peoples' passwords and social security numbers. If you just had a lazy Sunday you too may have a surprise logging on the sites you usually use.

Anyway, by dint of grit, I got my tables up at www.global-investing.com more or less normally but without being able to check the market prices with a real brokerage account. Visit and be impressed by my ability to get information on the web.

Because there will be no news on my blog on Thursday, and because today may not be a normal day if my brokerage account remains inaccessible, I am giving you some news which hit over the weekend.

Saturday's Financial Times revealed why our Australian-listed play on Argentine lithium fell so sharply after it hit problems with its evaporation sequence in H1. Orocobre was being sold by London-listed BlackRock World Mining Trust whose manager is one of the leading UK mining analysts, Evelyn Hambro, who by the way is a man, but his sidekick, Olivia Manning is not a man. Because of delays in its expansion and Black R ock's trigger finger, our OROCF fell by 23%.

*Credit Suisse upped its rating of local drug company Roche to buy from hold with a new price target of CHF 300, for the 10:1 Swiss shares. A franc is worth about $1.042 so the bank analysts do not expect the share to rise much. The yield is 3.25%.

*New Ireland Fund plans a rights issue to boost the funds it can invest at 92.5% of the average price by Nov. 10. The size of the IRL offering to existing shareholders will be one right for three shares but if demand is high they can increase the rights on offer by another 25%. These are tradable rights and while the amount is not yet known, these are the worst for existing shareholders in closed-end funds. Manager is the former Kleinwort Benson brokerage which went bust and is now owned by Amundi Asset Mgm.

*Herzfeld Caribbean Fund, CUBA; and Aurora Investment Trust both plan to do something similar. Terms are not yet known but AIVTF warns me not to look at them because they do not reveal their plans to SEC-regulated Yanks. This is the rule for the parent Phoenix Fund, the equivalent of an open-end fund which US people may not invest in. However, Aurora is the equivalent of a closed-end fund and we can legally buy it. Unfortunately, UK lawyers are terrified of our investors.

*Another real revision came in Canada where Bank of Montreal Capital Markets set an outperform rating on Brookfield Infrastructure Partners, a recent fund add to our portfolio.

*In Barron's, Fabio Paolini of AMG Managers' Pictet International Fund talked up its largest holding, Anheuser-Busch InBev which accounts for 3.7% of his fund's placements. However, Barron's failed to note that its ticker symbol is not only ABI in Belgium. It trades in the USA under venerable ticker of one of its parents, BUD, which Reshma Kapadia who interviewed Fabulous Fabio seems to be unaware of.

*Mostly the analyst community rushed to retroactively react to earlier good news over the weekend. McLean Capital Mgm upped Autoliv from neutral to buy on Sat. only after the stock soared on news it may spin-off its electronic car safety assets. The stock rose 14.5% last week.

*Zacks Research downgraded Infosys to hold from buy. It took long enough. Besides the boardroom coup the Indian IT company is giving rights to buy more shares cheaply but only to those who own the Bombay shares, not the ADRs. We pay high fees for the privilege of owning the ADRs but are not given a proxy vote or the rights offered the Indian contingent. I would say ADR owners are untouchable but of course, it is illegal in India to discriminate against untouchables now.

*Zacks also chopped its rating for Novo Nordisk to hold from buy. However, Columbine Capital upgraded NVO from neutral to favorable.

*Zacks raised Banco Santander to buy from hold. Offsetting that, Ford Equity Research downgraded SAN to hold from buy.

*Jefferies Group LLC cut its price target on Reckitt Benckiser to GBX 7500 from 8150 and cut the rating to hold. We exited before they were hacked but after their humidifier cleaning product had killed users in South Korea and Japan.

That was a red light before the profits starting falling.