From the BBC, which I tuned into to learn about the Queen beating the record of her great-great grandmother for longevity on the throne, I learned this morning about a possible cancer cure. A a sponge made out of biomaterial already used for medical devices can mop up cancer cells moving around the body to create metastases—and stop them in their tracks. So far the implanted sponge has only been tested in mice with induced breast cancer.

But it may work in other mammals, like humans.

When a cancer has been treated with surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy, stray cells may still be left which move into a new part of the body to start another tumor. So mopping them up can improve outcomes and extend lives. The research was done at the Dept of Biomedical Engineering at the U of Michigan. Its Prof. Lonnie Shea says the next step is testing in humans. The information the Beeb picked up was published in Nature Communications.

It is really fun tracking the stock markets this week. Even our Australian biotech which did its ipo in the midst of the mayhem last month is up. Happy days are here again!

The main reason is that Japan is cutting its corporate taxes to encourage investment. Our Tokyo (and Osaka) shares picked by Chris Loew and me are all up sharply along with most of Hong Kong and Singapore. The Nikkei average rose 7.7% on Wednesday also because short-sellers had to reverse their positions. The Japanese corporate tax rate, now 34.62%, will be cut to 31.32% next year.

Like Jeb Bush I would like to see a similar cut in US corporate taxes which have a distorting effect on US stock prices as well as encouraging inversions, over-borrowing, and buybacks. It is also why Yahoo cannot sell its Alibaba stock before Marissa Mayer has her twins.

But I want to warn you all that it is not going to go up without a break from now on. When they asked John Pierpont Morgan what would happen to stocks, he sagely replied: “They will fluctuate.”

There is another looming gulf which may impact US stock prices, just as Labor Day did last Friday. Next Monday and Tuesday many market participants will not participate because of the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah. I expect that will feed into prices in advance just as happened last Friday.

This will not affect Israeli shares which do not trade in Tel Aviv on Friday anyway (because it is closed Friday and normally open on Sunday, in a Middle Eastern way.) But it will affect markets elsewhere.

*The Japanese gainers are: Shinmaywa, 7224 in Tokyo, up 5.97%; Rion, 6823, up 4.44% (lucky it is not Chinese because 4 is a homonym for death); and dear old Dena (DNACF), 2432, up 7.58%. DNACF was added to the Tokyo index on Monday which is why it is beating the rest. I am responsible for DNACF but Chris picked the others. Our small cap fund is barely up,Japan Small Cap. BUY JOF.

Energy

*What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. After putting up with Israel's PM Benjamin Netanyahu lobbying Congress hard over the Iran nuclear deal, the US Administration is now backing the Texas partner of Delek Group (DLKGF), Noble Energy. The Knesset retained the anti-trust threat to their building the facilities for off taking Israeli offshore gas from the Leviathan field. If Israel can lobby over foreign policy surely the US can support the American minority shareholder in the field. Noble is operator on the ~33 trillion cu ft reservoir into which the two firms have already invested heavily.

What adds spice is that Bloomberg revealed on Wednesday that US Secy of State John Kerry owns over $1 mn in Noble shares.

*Martin Ferera is dropping Origin and putting the money into Veresen (FCGYF​). He writes:

Veresen’s is not 100% guaranteed - perhaps 75%? - because they still have to get final regulatory approval (which should be a formality) and then need to bring in partners (negotiations are in train) and their FID (final investment decision) will not happen until 2016.

However, once the decision is taken - they need to build 200 miles of pipeline from the hub in Malin and the export terminal itself. Not trivial, but not out of the ordinary. So that is why their chance of success is high.

Unlike Origin, Veresen is going to tap into existing pipeline networks and will not have to do primary extraction - so VSN can take advantage of existing bountiful and cheap North American supply.

Origin had to build everything from scratch - infrastructure, drilling gaswells, pipelines, storage, export terminal etc. That's why the project was over $26bn - compared to veresen whose costs are probably going to be roughly $6-7 bn.

Origin has secured long term contracts (20 years if memory serves) for 90% of production - the remaining 10% open for sale. Output is starting about now and so its cash flow and credit rating should begin to turn around. But at this point I am exiting origin and buying VSN instead.

*UBS has raised BP plc (BP) from neutral to buy, up two ranks. It is suffering still from the impact of the Gulf of Mexico disaster in public perception, and is a cheap share, with a 7.8% yield.

Software

*Nokia (NOK) is probably still oversold. We are so far ahead with the share, if not with the Yankee bond, that we are just letting it ride. I was probably wrong to have reacted to the euros 3 bn sale of Here to a bunch of German car-makers negatively. It produced only euros 555 mn in sales last year on which profits came in at euros 46 mn. So the sale made sense financially and also in getting NOK more focused on its Alcatel merger and cashing in on its patent portfolio. If I can get my price, I may average up, but I will not put this into the model portfolio as I did with the last batch.

*From India, Abhimanyu Sisodia writes:

Infosys and its fellow Indian IT outsourcer TCS were cleared ‎of visa violations by the US Labor Department. INFY also made it to Leader position in the Independent Testing Services - PEAK Matrix Assessment and Profile Compendium 2015 compiled by Everest Group, beating 22 other leading application testing services providers. The stock closed up 2.7% on the Bombay Stock Exchange on Wednesday.

*INFY was flat on Wednesday, on the NYSE before rising 0.17%. Vedanta Ltd (VEDL) was up over 7% that same day, on Wall St. Tata Motors (TTM) which we sold is up 3.2%.

Drugs

*The negative outcome of GlaxoSmithKline's (GSK) expensive trial combining its Breo withAstraZeneca's Symbicort, on which I reported yesterday, has led to disarray among analysts over GSK's prospects. Here are the updated analyst reports: JPMorgan-Cazenave, underweight; Barclays Capital, overweight, target price GBX 1650; Citigroup, neutral TP 1550. We like the divie, which is unlikely to be cut.

*As the US moves, maybe, toward a rise in interest rates, one country will benefit for certain from the move: Switzerland, where the Swissie is priced beyond the reach of its neighbors. To benefit, you can add to your holdings of Novartis (NVS), but as is clear from CEO Joe Jimenez's interview with Le Temps I cribbed from yesterday, the broad-production drug sector is suffering from other issues as well, like regulators and insurers hating to approve pricey drugs.

We may have to buy Nestlé which reported in francs. Our insurer, Zurich (ZURVY), reported in US$s already.

Funds

*I bought more PAK this week. I was fascinated by the Bloomberg Business Week article about how Portuguese shoe-manufacturers had moved up-market to beat Chinese competition and now were replacing Italian luxury shoes. Pakistan is doing something similar in the garment industry, based on my careful shopping investigations in London in July. I am requiring Abhimanyu to cover Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka for us too as my college stockbroker classmate, T. Ali, is not interested in filing for us.