>>> Fed's Lacker (hawkish, non voter): Markets should be able to deal with the F

Fed's Lacker (hawkish, non voter): Markets should be able to deal with the Fed selling assets at a fairly rapid pace; US economy has its own wellsprings of growth 
- Data-dependent Fed policy means there could be some volatility.
- There is no reason to intervene in times of market volatility, reasonably resilient financial markets should be able to handle volatility
- Not every instance of volatility is a crisis- Skeptical about relying very much on macroprudential policy or the ability to vary regulations in order to lean against the business cycle
- The October 15th selloff was not just about broker-dealer issues and regulations

FT : Norway’s $870bn oil fund considers infrastructure investments

--> as I was mentioning on the last few days/ week, I still thin that the infrastructure sector/ plays could a very good theme for 2015...I still pushing Vinci...

Norway is to debate allowing its $870bn oil fund to invest in infrastructure in what would be the biggest change in the largest sovereign fund’s investment strategy since the financial crisis.
Investments in assets such as motorways, power stations and airports will be considered by an expert panel with a final decision to be taken in 2016. The oil fund’s strategy council will also consider whether the limit that it can only invest 5 per cent of its assets in property should be changed.

Norway has adopted a cautious strategy on whether the oil fund can invest in unlisted assets, which are popular with other sovereign-wealth investors and big pension funds such as Singapore’s GIC and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. Almost 99 per cent of Norway’s holdings are in listed equities or bonds and just 1.3 per cent in property.
Some experts argue that the long time horizon needed for infrastructure – and the better returns promised – make it a natural fit for a sovereign fund such as Norway’s that has no liabilities and wants to exist for decades if not centuries.
Managers of the oil fund have also long argued to be able to invest in infrastructure and other unlisted assets such as private equity. Oystein Olsen, governor of Norway’s central bank, which houses the management of the oil fund, said earlier this year: “To achieve returns, we must take on risk . . . As we gain experience in real estate investing, it may be natural to invest in other types of real assets”.
But Yngve Slyngstad, chief executive of Norges Bank Investment Management, the fund’s manager, has in recent months said that the fund’s sheer size makes investing in new asset classes more difficult.
Property was added to the fund’s list of possible assets in 2008 while the first real estate purchase came in 2011. But the fund has struggled to reach its 5 per cent target for property investments, increasing its share of assets from 0.9 per cent at the end of the third quarter last year to 1.3 per cent 12 months later.
“Private assets become a smaller issue the larger the fund gets,” Mr Slyngstad told the Financial Times this summer.
Critics argue that unlisted assets are a poor fit for the oil fund with its commitment to transparency by, for instance, updating the value of its holdings several times a second on its website. Espen Henriksen, assistant professor at the University of California, Davis, claims that the fund has no competitive edge in private, opaque markets and should stick to liquid, listed assets.
The oil fund’s strategy council, led by British professor Elroy Dimson, will now consider the matter. Siv Jensen, Norway’s finance minister, said on Tuesday: “Developing the fund’s investment strategy through better diversification will help to ensure continued robust, long-term management of the fund.”
If the fund is allowed to invest in infrastructure, it will be permitted to buy assets in the renewable energy sector and emerging markets, the ministry underscored.

FT : Autonomy founder Mike Lynch to report Hewlett-Packard to SEC --

Autonomy founder Mike Lynch plans to ask US regulators to investigate evidence that he believes shows Hewlett-Packard made “false representations to the market” over its massive writedown on its acquisition of the UK software maker.
The British entrepreneur told the Financial Times that he would go to the Securities and Exchange Commission over a document, also seen by the FT, that he said sheds new light on HP’s reasoning for its $8.8bn writedown in November 2011, $5.5bn of which was stated to be due to “accounting misrepresentations” at the company.

HP said it welcomed any intervention from the authorities. “The same fertile imagination that was behind a massive fraud is apparently still hard at work making up stories. We would encourage Mr Lynch to spend as much time as possible with the authorities,” it said.
Mr Lynch said the document suggests the US company had not yet determined whether hundreds of millions of transactions were improperly booked at the time it took its huge charge on Autonomy.
It showed “unambiguously that the writedown was driven by accounting policy changes and differences, not fraud”, he said.
The document, which was being worked on at the time of the writedown, reveals HP calculated that Autonomy had improperly booked $350m worth of revenue generated through contracts with customers between 2010 and the first three quarters of 2011.
Separately, in November 2012, John Schultz, HP’s general counsel, said about $200m of Autonomy deals had been “created” over a two-year period beginning in 2009.
According to the document, whole categories of deals were considered illegitimate. Transactions were placed under labels ranging from “not IFRS compliant confirmed”, where HP believed the numbers did not meet UK accounting standards, to “management judgment/US GAAP difference”, where HP believed they did not meet the requirements set by US GAAP accounting standards.
More than $250m worth of revenues with which HP took issue were labelled “Not IFRS compliant probable”, suggesting that, though the US company considered these Autonomy deals suspicious, it had not yet decided conclusively that they failed UK accounting standards.
One person familiar with HP’s thinking stressed the document was not the “final arbiter” in its decision to write down Autonomy but was one of many considerations that fed into the outcome.
Mr Lynch said the evidence meant that Meg Whitman, HP chief executive, needed to “explain the exact calculation of the writedown to her shareholders”.
“We have now seen this rebasing document and it appears to show that HP has made false representations to the market,” he said. “We will be forwarding our knowledge of this matter to the relevant regulators.”

FT : HIV is becoming weaker, study finds

The rapid evolution of HIV in response to widespread drug treatment is making the virus less virulent and less likely to cause Aids, according to a study in Africa led by Oxford university.
The research, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that HIV is following one of the theoretical predictions of epidemiology: that epidemics in new hosts gradually cause less severe disease as the pathogens evolve. HIV moved into humans from apes in the early 20th century.

In the case of HIV, this natural weakening has been accelerated by the extensive use of antiretroviral therapy (ART) drugs in Africa.
“This research highlights the fact that HIV adaptation to the most effective immune responses we can make against it comes at a significant cost to its ability to replicate,” said Phillip Goulder, the study leader. “Anything we can do to increase the pressure on HIV in this way may allow scientists to reduce the destructive power of HIV over time.”
“The widespread use of ART is an important step towards the control of HIV,” added Mike Turner, head of immunobiology at the Wellcome Trust, which funded the study. “This research is a good example of how further research into HIV and drug resistance can help scientists to eliminate HIV.”
The research was carried out with more than 2,000 HIV-infected women in Botswana and South Africa, two countries hit hard by the virus. The key difference is that the epidemic has lasted a decade or so longer in Botswana.
The first part of the study showed that interaction between the human immune response and HIV leads to the virus becoming less virulent. People carrying a particular immune system gene called HLA-B*57 progress more slowly than usual to Aids.
In Botswana, where HIV has evolved further to adapt to HLA-B*57 than in South Africa, patients no longer benefit from the gene’s protective effect. But the data show that the cost of this adaptation is that HIV’s ability to replicate is significantly reduced, making it less virulent.
In the second part of the study the researchers developed a mathematical model, which concluded that drug treatment is accelerating the evolution of HIV variants with a weaker ability to replicate.
Independent experts said the study showed the benefit of maintaining and expanding HIV treatments while developing new drugs – and should not lead to complacency.
“If left untreated HIV still leads to Aids and death,” said Michael Brady, medical director at Terrence Higgins Trust, the leading UK Aids charity. “Our efforts should remain focused on encouraging the quarter of people with HIV in the UK who remain undiagnosed to come forward for testing and ensuring they have access to treatment and care as early as possible.”

WSJ : India Raises Tax on Fuels to Improve Finances

India Raises Tax on Fuels to Improve Finances
India’s Federal Government Raised the Factory-Gate Tax on Diesel and Gasoline

NEW DELHI—India’s federal government Tuesday raised a factory-gate tax on diesel and gasoline for the second time in less than a month to take advantage of falling global oil prices and improve weak finances.

The government raised the excise tax on diesel by 1 rupee ($0.016) a liter and on gasoline by 2.25 rupees a liter, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said in the upper house of Parliament.

A senior government official, who didn’t wish to be named, told reporters that the tax increase would boost government revenue by 40 billion rupees ($646 million) in the rest of the fiscal year through March 2015.

Indian consumers won’t be affected though as fuel retailers won’t raise retail prices, the official added.

Shares of state-run fuel companies Indian Oil Corp. 530965.BY -2.35% , Bharat Petroleum Corp. 500547.BY -3.27% and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. 500104.BY -1.81% extended losses following the news and were trading down between 3% and 4%.

Global crude oil prices have fallen to the lowest in five years, providing the government headroom to raise taxes without fueling local inflation.

On Nov. 13, it had raised the excise tax on the two fuels by 1.5 rupees a liter each.

The money raised is important for the government to narrow its fiscal deficit to 4.1% of gross domestic product this fiscal year from 4.5% last year. Sluggish tax revenue due to a weak economy and little progress so far in a government plan to sell stakes in state-run companies have cast doubts whether the deficit target will be achieved.

>>> Och-Ziff Capital discloses Nov metrics; OZ Master Fund November 2014 Perform

Och-Ziff Capital discloses Nov metrics; OZ Master Fund November 2014 Performance Estimate +2.6%

In addition, the Company is disclosing to investors in the funds that it manages that, as of December 1, 2014, the estimated unaudited amount of assets under management was approximately $47.1 billion, which reflects a net increase of approximately $1.1 billion since November 1, 2014. The Company's estimate of assets under management is inclusive of performance for the month ended November 30, 2014 and capital flows from November 2, 2014 through December 1, 2014.

>>> US Early premarket gappers

Early premarket gappers

Gapping up: CODE +18.2%, CY +13.1%, AVNR +12.7%, SCVL +8.7%, DGLY +7.7%, EOX +4.8%, NBG +4.7%, RCL +4.4%, DRYS +3.4%, CPE +3.4%, LOGI +3.2%, NADL +3.1%, MHR +2.6%, GWPH +2.4%, RBS +1.6%, BCS +1.5%, GPRO +1.4%, SDRL +1.4%, HSBC +1.3%, CCL +1.2%, RIO +1.1%, TYL +1%, RDS.A +1%, BHP +1%, TWTR +0.9%

Gapping down: VNCE -4.2%, QUNR -3.9%, AU -3.6%, PSTR -3.2%, GDX -2.9%, KGC -2.6%, GOLD -2.4%, NHI -2.2%, ALU -2%, AG -1.9%, THO -1.9%, SLV -1.6%, STO -1.6%, ABX -1.6%, GLD -1.4%, BMS -1.3%, NEM -1.2%, JCI -0.7%

>>> US Gapping Up

         Gapping up: CODE +18.2%,
CY +13.1%,
AVNR +12.7%,
SCVL +8.7%,
DGLY +7.7%,
EOX +4.8%,
NBG +4.7%,
RCL +4.4%,
DRYS +3.4%,
CPE +3.4%,
LOGI +3.2%,
NADL +3.1%,
MHR +2.6%,
GWPH +2.4%,
RBS +1.6%,
BCS +1.5%,
GPRO +1.4%,
SDRL +1.4%,
HSBC +1.3%,
CCL +1.2%,
RIO +1.1%,
TYL +1%,
RDS.A +1%,
BHP +1%,
TWTR +0.9%

Gapping down: VNCE -4.2%, QUNR -3.9%, AU -3.6%, PSTR -3.2%, GDX -2.9%, KGC -2.6%, GOLD -2.4%, NHI -2.2%, ALU -2%, AG -1.9%, THO -1.9%, SLV -1.6%, STO -1.6%, ABX -1.6%, GLD -1.4%, BMS -1.3%, NEM -1.2%, JCI -0.7%