Knowledge is power. And lack of knowledge is terrifying. This rather banal insight helps our readers by motivating our buys and sells.

Yesterday we have seen a bit of recoil from the mad global fund rush into the USA and the dollar which dominated last week's investment flows. The panic has not ended but it has become a bit more sensible.

You don't have to be a deep thinker to recall whenever a tidal wave move occurs in markets the fate of Ozymandias King of Kings. The tide always reverses.

All of Europe is not under imminent threat of Russian invasion, however busily Russia has been in testing borders in far-away areas of Europe (like Portugal) as well as nearby Nordic and Baltic countries. So the panic has been replaced by calculation of risk. Spain, Switzerland, and Ireland are up, Poland and Russia down, a sign of market discrimination.

The US dollar rush ultimately cannot continue because the money seeking a bolthole is limited. And because like all irrational excess, it contains the seeds of its own reversal.

An ever higher greenback would hurt the very large US stocks the fearsome are targeting. Most household name stocks are global players and multinational in ambition. Even AT&T, long a by-word for home-bias investing, is plotting to get into telecoms in Mexico by acquiring Iusacell.

So Wall Street cannot rise without selling stuff to foreigners, be it Boeings orStarbucks, castrated hogs or wheat, autos or Apples. If the dollar is too strong the foreigners cannot afford US goods or services.

I also think the wave of Republican Party support and money talking in Washington may reverse too. The combination of Tea Party antiestablishmentarianism and liberal revival is inevitable and may come as soon as 2016 if the supposedly mainstream GOP controlling both Houses of Congress come short of good legislation.

If they toady to their nutty fringe and drink the Kool-Aid, they GOP will get into fighting immigration, abortion, gays, deficit spending, and the Fed, they will become unelectable. If they behave sensibly and work on trade, tax, or budget reform with the White House and Democrats across the aisle the sensible Republicans may be attacked by the raving zealots in their own ranks. Enough zeal either way and the GOP can split. So this too will end. Look upon my works, ye mighty and despair, as Shelley wrote.

GOP Congress Stocks

Anyone wanting to play the Republican congress can buy makers of medical devices likeCovidien or Zimmer or Medtronics. All 3 are now outside our bailliwick as they are USA firms or becoming them.

You can also buy oilsands stocks or Transcanada on the argument that Keystone XL will be built. But remember that besides being filthy their extraction also is expensive, and the big job boost will temporary and Nebraskans may vote for the Democrat ticket the next time round.

.Uma Aluna Escrebe

*All those years of studying Portuguese at the Fundação Gulbenkian are paying off at last. This morning Portuguese regulators halted trading of Portugal Telecom SGPS because PT is in play from a different corner of the country's former empire than Brazil. In NY trading which was not halted the stock is up ~10.5%.

Africa's richest woman, Angola's Isabel dos Santos, 41,via her company Terra Peregrinis offering euros 1.35/sh for all of PT. Dos Santos is the Obama-colored daughter of Angolan President José Eduardo dos Santos and his ex-wife, Tatiana, an Azerbaijani of Muslim heritage, who is now selling real estate in Angola. The two married when JoséEduardo was exiled in Russia. He has a new family now among its members a grandson, JoséFilomeno de Sousa, or Zénu, who runs the Angolan sovereign wealth fund with Swiss and German advisors and has a sister, Tchizé, who is also active in business. Angola which is rich because of oil finds, has been run by José Eduardo for decades.

Daughter Isabel has invested in an Angolan restaurant chain, Continente supermarkets in cooperation with the Portuguese firm, cement plants, and casinos. She already has hefty investments in the old colonial motherland including a stake in Unitel, the largest cellphone carrier in Angola which has demanded right of first refusal if PT decides to sell assets. It was excluded from the Luxembourg bid for PT. She also has invested in Nos, a Portuguese cable TV service, and ZON which oeprates satellite TV in both countries, plus a stake in Banco BPI..

She is also rumored to be linked to the Russian-Israeli Leviev diamond dealership, which I cannot verify. She is married to a Congolese businessman and is the patron of the Luanda modern art scene and the Angolan Red Cross. The source of her money is murky, as expected.

She is being advised by Caixa Banco de Investimento SA, a leading govt-owned bank. I would guess that her bid has more backing from Lisbon than the Altice one backed by Oi shareholders. It is unclear if the Terra bid covers the Rioforte debt from an entity of the ruling family of bankrupt Banco Espirito Santo. But the Altice one excluded both it and African assets.

The Portuguese Africa connection is alive and well. The architect of the now-floundering merger of PT with Brazilian Oi was Mozambique-born Zainal Mohammed Bava, also of Muslim heritage. Like Bava, dos Santos studied in London, in her case engineering at King's College. (The US Secretary of State is married to another Mozambican, Teresa Heinz Kerry.)

*Your editor is far less confident when dealing with Chinese companies. Hence when our reporter in Hong Kong became incommunicado, I opted to sell out of her rottenest stock pick, Anton Oilservices. ATONY has fallen mainly because of the lower oil price which lets China buy cheaply in Latin American markets, delaying its shale development. But ATONY (and Vivian Ng) are also suffering form the uncertainty over Hong Kong itself as the student uprising continues to threaten the local power structure. Naturally, I support the yellow umbrella crew in my heart; but I do not want to be a hostage to their influence on the soon-to-be-linked Hong Kong-Shanghai stock link. So I am selling, but with a limit order. And, in order to keep up my faith in wellhead services, built up by my happy history of owning Schlumberger since the 1960s, I am keeping a bit for the future. I am taking a bath on this share as are readers who followed Ng. There is no particularly reason to sell except we have lost our coverage. We have had a succession of bilingual reporters covering China for us, but each one leaves for a better job after a while.

*Meanwhile in Hong Kong trading, Tencent rose over 2.5% this morning.

Kitchen Counters

*Frida Ghitis adds to my note last week about her stock (and countertop) pick CaesarstoneSdot Yam, CSTE:

The secret of Caesar's success is a balance of geography so when one region is down another captures top dollar, she writes. In fact CSTE's biggest market now is the US where a new plant is likely to be opened in H1 next year right down the road from Frida (in Richmond Hill GA), followed by Australia. Meanwhile Europe and notably the eastern part of it, home of trophy wives with trophy kitchens is sagging.

She provides more color on the new deal with Ikea where margins are lower. CSTE she writes “has 'Supernatural', a quartz product with greater margins. CEO Yosef Shiran says quartz is becoming accepted a the preferred surface.”

*In Frida's homeland, an outbreak of terrorism against the Calão Limon pipeline set back Ecopetrol but not as much as before the Cuba-based talks or before oil in the Americas was hit by a shale-driven glut. EC depends on the 500 mile link to bring crude from wells to its Caribbean port near Cartagena. But the port is currently under repair so there will be no loss of sales beyond what already hit.

*I finally exited DeNA, DNACF, at $14.20 this morning.

*I also got executed on my partial exit from Cosan at $9.53. There is nothing like a focus on Petrobras to turn away attention from other Brazilian messes like CZZ.

*Rio Tinto's confidence that it can beat the competition in a low iron-ore market has hit Vale, along with other special Brazilian factors.

Distracting Investors

*A bit too cute, after the fall of the government, Mongolia Growth Fund told investors all about its plans for the former hospital called Tuguldur Center, which is to become a central high-yielding shopping center in Ulaanbaatar, probably with a jv partner yet to be named. It also dazzled us with other news of Mongolia's charms, like that it has the 5^thfastest-growing consumer market on earth, growing 11.8% this year. It is now 72^nd in the World Bank 'ease of doing business' ranking (from before the government fell, of course.) It set a new national rail gauge like that of China so it can export coal there and also won a Sinopec bid to build a coal gasification plant pending government approvals (what government?). And it plans to ship meat to Russia. MNGGF here; YAK in Canada. We are not really as ill-informed as the managers seem to believe.

*Another distraction from SPDR Gold Trust which sent out a repeat of its prospectus after I bought more last week. This reminded GLD shareholders that it sells great lumps of bullion whenever the price drop is equal to that of 100,000 shares (called a basket). This is done by Authorized Participants, a small number of US, Swiss, German, British, and Canadian banks or brokerages. It then points out that these sales may be at discounts or premiums to net asset value, more likely discounts (because the fund has expenses to cover). That means gold should fall further just because GLD exists.

However there is a counter argument presented by Hebba Investments at www.seekingalpha.com, based on the difference between how gold and silver ETFs are affecting the metals markets. SLV, the silver ETF, is suffering the same investor exit as GLD but the underlying market for the metal has not been affected and silver holdings are higher.

Hebba argues that the sales are not the result of the mechanics of the basket, but because the major banks need yellow metal to satisfy demand from Asia. “The gold ETF is a convenient piggy-bank for Authoritized Participants (who also happen to be in the London Gold market) to gt signficant amonts of gold they can ship to Indian and Chinese buyers.”

Now his thesis is that the gold market is somehow bifurcated between transparent holdings (like in GLD) and large amounts of off-the-books demand from Asia. This keeps very high Asian buying from affecting the gold price in open markets while forcing down the value of GLD shares. He concludes that the drop “in gold held by GLD and other ETFs [is] actually bullish as 'convenient' gold is becoming scarcer.”

While some Seekingalpha notes are amazingly wrong-headed this one may not be all hooey.

Rating Updates

*CRH plc was rated hold by Deutsche Bank.

*Maxim Group rates Teva a buy again. TEVA.

*Jefferies says Schlumberger is poised for sold growth despite lower oil prices and commends its “execution, technology, and efficiency,” the very factors for which we have no data from ATONY.

*Nokia is down not only because it is near Russia. It also was downgraded by Sanford C. Bernstein from market to uunderperform with a $6.40 target price (TP) down from $8.36. NOK

*GlaxoSmithKline's TP was cut to GBP 1540 from 1575 last week, equivalent of $24.55 from $25.1, and cut from outperform to hold. GSK

*BCE after its earnings report won a range of opinions in Canada,. Barclays overweights the telco with a TP of C$55. Bank of Montreal rates it outperform with a TP of C$53, up one loonie. CIBC rates it neutral but raised its TP from C$48 to C$50. JPMorgan Chaserates it overweight and upped its TP to C%56 from 53.

But National Bank of Canada cut it from outperform to sector perform, while Royal Bank of Canada kept it at neutral but cut the TP to C$49 from 50.

*CocaCola Hellenic, sold mainly on tradability grounds, was rated overweight by JP Morgan Chase but downrated to Sell by Société Générale. This is curious because JPM is supposed to be a US brokerage (and the ADR was cancelled); SG is French and the stock trades daily in London. CCH.

*Oops. I misinterpreted the comment about Fireman's Fund at the Allianz conference call last week. The talk was ot about selling the US insurance arm of the German insurer. It was that its Q3 results were not in on time for the consolidation of Q3 figures by its parent. Entschuldigen. The main takeaway from the CC is that AZSEY will pay out a bigger percentage of its earnings in dividends, but still not as high a level as Zurich does.