Today is my husband's birthday and we will celebrate by going to a boat-race dinner tonight. The boat-race is being held in London, between Oxford (his alma mater) and Cambridge. But what we are thinking about is not which shade of blue is faster on the River Thames, but what being a year older means for our portfolio.

The golden years have hit us both and it is worrying. Both my parents benefited from multiple pensions, particularly my mother who arrived in the USA in 1937 already owning American stocks which had been given to her grandmother by a NY relative working on Wall Street. By the time she retired, at 62, besides a healthy stock portfolio build up over the years, she collected Social Security, a pension from her job at what was then Chase-Manhattan Bank, and an-ever-higher pension in German marks from her job in Germany before she emigrated. When my father died she added a widow's pension to the pile even though she turned down inheriting his estate (which went to her child and grandchildren.) The pensions were not taxed.

Given her background, and after taking over my father's holdings, mom was invested mostly in US dividend-producing stocks, with a few foreign yield funds for diversification. I and my readers still own some of these yield funds today. Among my inherited stock portfolio holdings is Bristol-Myers Squibb which my mother bought because of a prescription she found healthful.

The days of ample retirement are gone. While we write about fixed income investments, we are not wildly enthusiastic about them. With one exception discussed below. Currently you can pick up a yield of 7 to 8% with some bonds and preferred shares from outside the USA. This sounds like it will see you out. But financial repression is always a risk: unleashing inflation to cut budget deficits here and abroad. So are new taxes (or default risks) on vehicles like triple tax-free bonds favored by geezers like me.

Plenty of experts say bonds make investing sense, including some older writers like Mark Hulbert, a commentator on marketwatch (who also rates newsletters), or General Joe Shaefer, USAF-ret., who writes a newsletter for investors in hisStanford Wealth Fund. Both say there are arguments for bonds. I am not yet convinced.

Yesterday I changed many of my passwords to avoid the Heartbleed Internet spy. Note that our website does not collect your credit card details directly, but only through the authorize.com system we use to link to our bank. So far my bank has not sought changes in our signup, perhaps because Jamie Dimon has other expenses to cover before JP Morgan Chase (successor to the bank where my mother worked) can deal with this irritating lack of cyber-security for its high-fee credit-card services. I will tell you when it is safe to change your password to get into www.global-investing.com Meanwhile google, yahoo, and probably lots of other e-mail sites are urging customers to change their passwords. Note that the risk of e-mail access is greater if you use the same password for many sites including your bank account. Be more creative.

More for paid subscribers from Britain, Canada, Hong Kong, South Africa, Ireland, Australia, Denmark, and India. Including an important note about our biggest yield play of all.

*We are heavily overweight in preferreds in the UK from one single bank which had to suspend preferred dividends for 18 months after its common shares were nationalized. We loaded up then. The prefs are still at a discount because yield-seekers fear it will happen again.

The Daily Telegraph reports today that Royal Bank of Scotland (the issuer of our prefs) has reached agreement with the UK government (owner of 81% of the bank at last count) to allow it to buy back for £1.5 bn the "golden share" which gives the British govt a veto on paying dividends to common shareholders. This will allow RBS to be privatized more easily in a few years, assuming that it remains on track to earn a profit.

For us owners of non-cumulative preferred shares of RBS and the C preferred shares of its sub, National Westminster, the news is encouraging. Preferred shares have preference and their dividends have to be paid before those on common shares. So our divvies are safer and our RBS shares should rise to close the gap from the $25 (par) at which they were issued. RBS also won permission from the European Union to delay from the end of 2013 (deadline missed) for ipo privatization of Williams & Glyn private bank branches, to be bought by The Corsair Consortium of institutions and private equity firms for £600 mn. While the deal is delayed, RBS crafted a new logo for the branches involved which seems to stress the ampersand rather than the venerable names of the banks being sold, to stress "partnership". The Queen has an account at a Windsor branch of W&G.

*An on-line annual report with excessive graphics winged its way here from Paddy Power plc. Investors really want to know the bottom-line, not look at pictures of successful brash ad campaigns for betting on various races (including that for the new pope and for book awards) FY 2013 was good, with PDYPF income up 12% to euros 745.2 mn, or a diluted 2.52 per share (up only 2% from 2012 because of more stock issued and currency changes; without the latter the rise was 4%.) The dividend was raised an unlucky-sounding 13% to euros 1.35/sh. Because Paddy is a Euro-listed company whose biggest business is in Britain and Australia, currency factors matter a lot.

Betters bet more last year, euros 6.18 mn, up 8%, helped by currency factors which helped offset higher taxes, currency depreciation, hefty investments in its Italy startup, and too many victories against the house in British horse-racing. Revenues came in at euros 745.2 mn, up 17% in core currencies and 12% overall. Gross profits hit 617 mn, up 15% in core currencies and up 11% overall. Operating costs were kept to a 15% rise across all currencies and came to euros 479.6 mn.

Politics matters too, especially in the UK. This year Britain will introduce a 15% tax on to apply to online gambling revenues and Paddy Power noted that about 20% of all UK bookies do not earn enough to pay the tax. That is a potential boost for its business. It also supports 51 different casino betting platforms, up from 15 a year before (developed for Australia but applicable elsewhere).

PDYPF is lobbying hard for an evidence-based policy to protect Brits from addiction to one-armed bandits in betting shops rather than limits on how many machines can be installed per shop. The present rule neglects "clustering" of shops from the same bookie competitor in poor areas where gambling addicts live. This is an ongoing risk but Paddy, using the Irish model of, makes a strong case in media and government circles and is one of the gambling stocks least dependent on British main (high) street stores thanks to its internet presence. Its growth is coming from on line betting and of that total, last year 45% came from mobile phones or multichannel betting.

If you want to take a long view, Paddy is the most international of the British betting stocks, not being British but Irish. And it just may succeed in setting up its Internet betting sites in this country.

*A similar overloaded annual report came winging in yesterday from Cameco, the Canadian uranium firm. It boosted its 2013 revenues to C$2.44 bn on which earnings came in up 26% to C$317.7 mn, or 81 cents/sh. Output of uranium rose 8% to 23.6 mn lbs but prices rose only1% in C$ or 4$ in greenbacks, keeping profit from rising as fast as production.That's the good news.

The bad news is that the CCJ missed its 2013 target for restarting mining at its Cigar Lake property in Saskatchewan, again. And it dropped its 2016 36 mn pound production target in order to cut costs, a reflection of the current lousy market for uranium. Cigar Lake is expected to go live this year, however. CCJ mines ~15% of the uranium in the world in Saskatchewan, Wyoming, Nebraska, and Kazakhstan, with future plans in new sites in Canada and Kazakhstan plus projects under evaluation in Australia. The Cigar Lake delay meant Cameco had to buy spot uranium in order to meet delivery commitments.

It also operates conversion facilities in Canada to turn uranium trioxide into uranium hexafluroide, used in power plants. And in Jan. of last year it bought Nukem GmbH in Germany which trades uranium and recovers it from power plants and other sources. This was financed by a partial exit from electricity generation in Canada.

Longer-term, the world will need more uranium because of new reactors being built or planned. Last year 4 new reactors only were connected to the grid, 3 in China and one in India, while 8 nuclear power plants were shut, 4 in the USA and others in Korea, the Emirates, and Belarus. Currently there are 433 nuclear power plants generating 394 gigaWatts. CCJ expects that over the next 10 years the number will rise to 526 reactions, with 144 new ones offsetting 51 closures, meaning a 3%/yr growth rate. Already work has begun on 70 of those reactors. China is the leader with 29 plants in construction, followed by India, Russia, South Korea, and the USA. Of the 70 plants being built, 50 will be online by 2017.

This translated into uranium demand for consumption and strategic inventories. CCJ estimates that ~20% of new sources will be needed to fill demand a decade from now. The biggest risk is the cost of labor, which last year accounted for 37% of production costs at uranium mines.

*Tencent Holdings is up sharply today because it did a shelf bond registration for up to $5 bn in medium-term notes which resulted in strong support for the TCTZF share from across the Chinese Wall from brokerage bond desks. How much and how long and at what interest rates the notes will be issued at is unknown but they want a part of the mandate. The roadshow begins in the USA next week. Already in the past half year, Tencent has done 3 mega-mn dollar deals with e-commerce firm JD.com for a 15% stake at $215 mn; with property services firm Leju Hldgs for a 15% stake at $180 mn; and with Korean mobile games-maker Games Corp for a 28% stake at $500 mn. Tencent first tapped the US$ bond market late in 2011 for $600 mn, followed up 9 months later with another same-size issue; and another 21 months later for $300 mn. But this is a new level of borrowing, aimed at tit for tat rivalry with Alibaba. The main victims of the battle are traditional retailers. Peter Fuhrman in seekingalpha.com today published photos of the huge Shenzhen shopping mall at the entrance to the railway station with no customers in sight.

Boosting the boom in Tencent is news that China will connect the Hong Kong stock exchange, where Tencent has its primary listing, with the Shanghai bourse, allowing cross-border trading of up to $3.8 bn/day as part of its market liberalization measures. The impact on our Hong Kong portfolio was diverse: shares of PRC stocks like Guanghen Railway (GSH, HK:5025 which doesn't own the shopping mall Mr. Fuhrman visited) benefited while foreign HK-listed stocks and Chinese shares listed in London took it on the chin.

We own TCTZF three ways: directly; through South Africa's Naspers, NPSNY, which owns ~30%; and as one of the top 5 holdings in our JP Morgan China Region closed-end fund, JFC. I sold our Hong Kong variant mainly because I had bought it to test whether the US market tracked Hong Kong well, and because I thought we had too much exposure to a speculative stock run by a wild internet player. I just learned that Jim Jubak of marketwatch.com (a Dow-Jones website) also owns Tencent. Nowhere is it priced at ten cents, alas. And since it is not present in India you don't get BRICS exposure in one fell swoop.

*The other main beneficiary of Chinese market interchange easing is Anton Oilfield Services, ATONY, up over 6% today. It is ~20% owned by Schlumberger Ltd and is a play on Chinese exploration of shale properties. While its primary listing is as HK:3337 it has an active ADR. It was written up by Vivian Ng, and went up despite having gone ex-div on Monday.

*A week after the post-signing gala at the King David Hotel had to be cancelled, Woodside Petroleum of Australia and the Israeli taxman are close to a deal on allowing WPL to take 25% of the rights to the Leviathan Israeli offshore field (which lives up to its name) for $2.7 bn. The deal will be signed by Passover which begins Monday night. The issue was over how many years WPL would be allowed to depreciate its investment, with the Ozzies seeking to do it in 3 years and Jerusalem holding out for 30 years. It appears they will amortize the investment in line with depletion, which will encourage Woodside to maximize gas sales in the short term. The Australians also wanted a commitment that the company will not be subject to future changes in the tax rules under consideration but were fobbed off with a promise that they can sue if this happens. The speeded-up depletion is good for our Leviathan stock, Delek Group, the largest holder through two subs, along with Noble Energy of Texas. They are cutting their own interests to admit Woodside. Having missed the the deadline set out in their MOU, WSL may have to sweeten terms with DGRLY, NBL, and Ratio Oil.

DGRLY which started out as an Israeli version of Berkshire Hathaway (using funds from its insurance revenues to invest in offshore gas), is now rumored to be selling the rest of its US insurer, Republic Group, to raise $200-mn to invest in the energy find. Reuters did not report the potential buyer.

*More on the Prostvac poster from Bavarian Nordic from Patti the biotech maven: It contains transgenes for prostate specific antigens and 3 co-stimulatory molecules, plus 2 pox-viruses to prime the immune system and boost it. Findings from phase I are that it is very effective used before chemotherapy and therefore good in early state prostate cancers to reduce the tumor size before treatment. It is less good for urgent situations where delaying chemo is risky. Part of the problem with prostate cancers is that their aggressivity varies but all patients used to be treated the same hurting quality of life with impotence and urinary incontinence.

Prostvac seems to enhance the effectiveness of chemo and other immuno-therapy and therefore has appeal as a combo drug to improve outcomes because it stimulates the immune system to specifically target prostate cancer cells. Phase III is gaining patients. Phase I has closed one arm. Phase II is the key with "enhanced efficacy with no significant alternation to safety profile of other modalities."

She adds: Prostvac is most beneficial for patients with low tumor burden and less aggressive disease. It is easy to administer subcutaneously by IV. Antigen cascades may work against additional tumor antigens in other uses, I think.

Vivian adds: BVNKF is unapologetic for sending both of us illegible texts of the poster which could not be opened, part-copied, or even read (small type). Luckily Patti could go to a local conference and read the poster on the pillar. This is how Danes treat their shareholders. The full posting, perhaps in readable format, is planned for the BVNKF website starting April 16, but of course the stock is already on the rise. It hit a $20 peak today despite the biotech-tech selloff.

*FiercePharma, a newsletter, says that Reckitt Benckiser is the likely winner in the 4-way race against Bayer, Novartis and Sanofi to buy Merck's consumer health unit. The problem with their tip is that they think RBGLY is Irish; it isn't. It's British. Being smaller it is said to face fewer antitrust obstacles. The bite will be ~12 bn. Among the goodies in the Merck portfolio is allergy med Claritin. The winner will be named next Wed.

*Dr Reddy continues to fall. My reasoning was mainly over the BJP's not really being good for business, but as long as I got the direction right I can crow.

*I sold out of BP Castrol in Japan (5015:Japan) at Y538/sh.