>>> What to look at today - 7th of July 2021

Most Asian stocks fell Wednesday and Treasuries held an advance on concerns about the economic recovery from the pandemic, virus variants and China’s scrutiny of the technology sector.
Japan led regional shares lower amid a climb in the yen on demand for havens. Chinese tech firms retreated in Hong Kong as Beijing’s cybersecurity probe of ride-hailing giant Didi Global Inc., and vow to tighten oversight of data security and overseas listings, hurt sentiment. U.S. contracts fluctuated after the S&P 500 dipped and the Nasdaq 100 reached a record. European futures edged up.
Ten-year U.S. Treasury yields hit February lows overnight amid slower-than-expected service-sector growth, with short covering exacerbating the move. Australian and New Zealand bonds rallied. The dollar retained a climb.
Oil steadied after dropping toward $73 a barrel in the fallout from the OPEC+ crisis, which has stymied efforts to raise production and buffeted prices.
US After Hours Pretty quiet after hours; SGH +4.4% up nicely on beat-and-raise; IMMR +11.9% higher on strong guidance

Nikkei -1.15% Hang Seng -0.74% CSI +0.88% Shnaghai +0.44% Shenzen+1.33%

Eur$ 1.1828 CNH 6.4749 CNY 6.4711 JPY 110.53 GBP 1.3806 CHF 0.9236 RUB 74.2659 TRY 8.6823 WTI$ 73.43 +0.08% Gold 1,798.25 +0.06% BTC 34,700 +650 ETH 7,400 +90

S&P -0.05% Nasdaq +0.05% EuroStoxx +0.16% FTSE +0.23% Dax +0.22% SMI +0.21

Macro :
- Cryptocurrency Could Buy You a 101-Carat Diamond at Sotheby’s
- European Tech’s ‘Eye-Watering’ Valuations Raise Bubble Fear
- Elsa Regains Hurricane Status as It Nears Florida Gulf Coast
- EU Carbon Border Tax Will Raise About EU10B Annually: FT

Spacs :
- Pioneer SPAC Seeks to Fill Gap Left by Underfunded Finnish PE
- Nextdoor to Go Public in SPAC Deal Valued at $4.3 Billion

Keep an eye on :
- ABI BB : AB InBev’s Botswana Unit Sues Government Over Alcohol Sales Ban
- AED BB : Aedifica to Spend EU11.5m on Dutch Care Home Project
- ACC NO : Aker Carbon Capture to Explore Opportunities for Capture at BIR
- AKOBO NO : Akobo Minerals to Raise SEK50m in Placement Before Oslo Listing
- AGL IM : Dufry May Be Interested in Partnership With Autogrill: MF
- BMW GY : BMW Takes Lead in U.S. Luxury Market With Better Access to Chips
- BORR NO : Borr Drilling Sets Up to $40m Shares ATM Offering
- CLASB SS : Clas Ohlson June Sales 0%
- CSGN SW : Credit Suisse Losing Top Industrials, Media and Energy Bankers
- DIDI US : FTSE Will Add Didi to Stock Indexes Barring Any Trade Suspension
- DUFN SW : Dufry May Be Interested in Partnership With Autogrill: MF
- EDF FP : France’s Vial Says Talks Continuing With EU Commission on EDF
- EDF FP : UK Households Face Energy Bill Surcharge for Nuclear Plants: FT
- GFC FP : Gecina Wins 9-Year Lease Renewal With Latham & Watkins
- GE US : General Electric to Become More Aggressive on M&A, CEO to Echos
- INF LN : Informa Shares Rise After Betaville ‘Uncooked Alert’
- KLED SS : Kungsleden 2Q Revenue Meets Estimates
- LSG NO : Leroy Prelim 2Q Harvest 36,700 Metric Tons
- LLOY LN : Lloyds Banking Group Launches Home Rental Business: FT
- NENTB SS : NENT Group Wins Premier League Rights in Several Markets
- NDX1 GY : Nordex Gets 923MW Final Order From Acciona Energia in Australia
- OTB LN : On The Beach Offers Shares via Numis Securities, Peel Hunt
- PEABB SS : Peab Signs SEK 716M Contract to Sell Rental Apartment Complex
- PUB FP : Record Ad-Spending Rebound Is a Shot in the Arm for Agencies
- RNO FP : Renault Co-Leads $118 Million Investment in EV Battery Startup
- RNO FP : Renault's EV Outlook Is an 'Electropop' vs. a Resounding Bang
- ROG SW : WHO Urges Covid-19 Treatment With Roche and Sanofi Anti-Inflammatory Drugs - WSJ
- SALM NO : SalMar Prelim 2Q Harvest 36,600 Metric Tons
- SAN FP : WHO Urges Covid-19 Treatment With Roche and Sanofi Anti-Inflammatory Drugs - WSJ
- SENS SW : Sensirion Prelim 1H Revenue About CHF144M
- SPI AV : S Immo Sees EUR130m Property-Valuation Gain Through End-June
- VOW3 GY : Volkswagen Seeks to Sell Stake in Electrify America: Reuters
- WISE LN : Payments Firm Wise’s Listing Bolsters London Tech Hub Ambitions

>>> Europe : Brokers Upgrades & Downgrades - 7th of July 2021

>>> Up
* Adidas Raised to Buy at HSBC; PT 360 euros
* Bossard Raised to Add at Baader Helvea; PT 330 Swiss francs
* Johnson Matthey Raised to Hold at Panmure Gordon; PT 3,039 pence
* Kone Raised to Sector Perform at RBC; PT 70 euros
* LeadDesk Raised to Buy at Inderes; PT 27 euros
* Oxford Biomedica Raised to Buy at Panmure Gordon; PT 1,479 pence
* Sartorius Stedim Biotech Raised to Buy at SocGen; PT 486 euros

>>> Down
* Knorr-Bremse Cut to Equal-Weight at Morgan Stanley; PT 105 euros
* Morrison Cut to Hold at Berenberg; PT 254 pence
* TietoEVRY Cut to Neutral at Goldman; PT 29 euros

>>> Initiation
* Calliditas Therapeutics Rated New Buy at SEB Equities
* Capital & Counties Rated New Buy at Berenberg; PT 200 pence
* Catena Rated New Neutral at JPMorgan; PT 500 kronor
* Dufry Reinstated Hold at Stifel; PT 63 Swiss francs
* Evonik Remains at Hold at SocGen; PT 30 Euros
* Horizonte Minerals Rated New Outperform at BMO; PT 12 pence
* Lanxess Remains Buy at SocGen; PT 74 euros
* Linc Rated New Hold at SEB Equities; PT 100 kronor
* Shaftesbury Rated New Buy at Berenberg; PT 725 pence
* WDP Rated New Overweight at JPMorgan; PT 38 euros

>>> Call
* Berenberg Bullish on Outlook for London West End Landlords
* Elevator Market Growth Seen Moderating, Kone Upgraded: RBC
* Tesla Seen Facing Greater Scrutiny From China: Morgan Stanley

NY Post : Discovery’s David Zaslav promises more media merger ma

Discovery’s David Zaslav promises more media merger mania at Sun Valley

SUN VALLEY, Idaho — Allen & Co.’s “summer camp for billionaires” kicked off on Tuesday with David Zaslav of Discovery promising that the media merger frenzy created by the video streaming wars is far from over.

“We’re not done yet,” Zaslav said when asked about additional deal targets following Discovery’s $43 billion merger with AT&T’s entertainment unit WarnerMedia.

Although the planned merger will create a media behemoth — joining AT&T’s CNN, HBO, and Hollywood studio Warner Bros. with Discovery’s Food Network and TLC — Zaslav says he’ll continue to be on the lookout for other possible targets after the deal closes in about eight months.

“There’s a lot of assets out there that have good IP that will probably get new homes,” said Zaslav upon entering the posh conference grounds in Sun Valley, Idaho, wearing a short-sleeve t-shirt.

While Zaslav was one of the few media moguls to stop to speak to the press upon entering the invite-only event, his comments are undoubtedly on the tops of minds for other media moguls scrambling to compete with the likes of Netflix.

Other media bigs seen arriving on the posh resort grounds on Tuesday include Bob Chapek of Disney, Brian Roberts of NBCUniversal’s Comcast, Shari Redstone of ViacomCBS and Jason Kilar of WarnerMedia and Netflix co-CEO’s Reed Hastings and Ted Sarandos, the Kings of Streaming.

As moguls rolled in on Monday and Tuesday, dozens of private jets clogged the local airport and even prevented some attendees from arriving on schedule. But at least a few billionaires refused chauffeurs. Comcast’s Roberts arrived driving a black Toyota SUV, while Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffett was spotted driving around town with a woman in an Escalade, one Sun Valley local told The Post.

While all eyes are on the old-guard media and Silicon Valley titans, the storied confab, run by secretive investment bank Allen & Co., will kick off Wednesday with a keynote from younger tech stars like Patrick Collison, the CEO of red-hot fintech startup Stripe, which is among the world’s most valuable private companies, The Post has learned.

Collison is scheduled to speak alongside Shopify’s Tobias Lutke first thing on Wednesday morning at 8:30 a.m., according to a copy of the confab’s confidential schedule obtained by The Post.

Thursday’s keynote will be led by King Abdullah Il Ibn Al Hussein of Jordan, followed by a session on creativity featuring husband-wife pair IAC chairman Barry Diller and fashion designer Diane von Fustenberg.

Activities, the schedule says, will include the usual suspects of hiking, golf and tennis, but also (oddly for this crowd) knitting.

Missing from the public eye on Tuesday were the tech moguls slated to attend, including Apple’s Tim Cook, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, the richest man in the world.

Their lack of showmanship comes as Silicon Valley faces antitrust probes in Washington, and as companies like Apple face growing criticism by peers for the high fees it charges apps that sell goods via the Apple App Store.

Diller — an outspoken mogul who arrived at the conference in a silver mustang convertible — has recently slammed Apple’s app store fees as “disgusting” and is reportedly feuding with Google over accusations that IAC used deceptive marketing practices.

Asked by The Post if he expects to clash with fellow attendees like Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Diller said “absolutely.”

“No, that was a joke,” he added before speeding off.

NY Post : Air taxi startup Volocopter gains key production certification


BERLIN – German flying taxi startup Volocopter said on Tuesday it was acquiring long-time partner DG Flugzeugbau, in a step that secures its compliance with the European Union air safety regulator’s production standards.

The acquisition, the terms of which were not disclosed, means that Bruchsal-based Volocopter now has production organization approval in compliance with the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), in addition to existing EASA design approval.

“Volocopter is now the first and only electric vertical take-off and landing company holding both the required design and production organization approvals to advance its aircraft towards commercial launch,” it said in a statement.

Volocopter hopes to bring its two-seater flying taxi, which looks like an oversized drone, into regular service in time for the 2024 Paris Olympics. It is also developing a similar cargo-lift drone.

It recently raised $237 million to fund its push for certification. Well-funded rivals Lilium and Joby have meanwhile announced plans to float on the U.S. stock market by merging with listed shell companies.

FT : CNH Industrial chief on supply chain woes: ‘it’s like Whack-a-Mole’

CNH Industrial chief on supply chain woes: ‘it’s like Whack-a-Mole’
‘Tubes and tyres’ are among the shortages the industrial equipment manufacturer is facing, says Scott Wine

When it comes to the shortages bedevilling global supply chains, Scott Wine, CNH Industrial chief executive, is less worried about semiconductors than tubes and tyres.

Like many manufacturers, CNH, a maker of tractors, trucks and construction equipment that is controlled by Italy’s Agnelli family, is struggling to source parts as the global economy revs back up to meet demand.

But while the company was able to buy most of the chips it needed from brokers, Wine said shipping costs have risen and there have been other shortages “that are much worse for us”.

“Tyres, tubes, across the board, we’ve got 63 suppliers that are stopping our plants from manufacturing,” he told the Financial Times. “It’s like Whack-a-Mole. The good news is my team is really, really good at Whack-a-Mole.”

“It’s the worst supply chain I’ve seen in my career,” he added.

Leo Tolstoy wrote that “happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way” — and the same principle applies to manufacturing supply chain woes, said Don Jones, vice-president of RCF Economic & Financial Consulting in Chicago.

“Each industry’s sad tales with its supply chain is going to be peculiar to that industry, depending on where they’re sourcing, and how it’s arriving,” he said.

Manufacturers had to spend more money to source materials last month, with the Institute for Supply Management’s prices paid index, which tracks what manufacturers pay for inputs, jumping to 92.1 in June compared with 88.0 in May, its highest level since the 1970s.

Capital Economics senior economist Michael Pearce said in a note that the report suggests “the ‘transitory’ surge in prices seen over the past few months still has a little while to run”.

CNH Industrial was formed in 2012 after several years of corporate restructuring that began when the late Sergio Marchionne, then chief executive at Fiat, moved to separate Fiat’s automotive and farm equipment businesses.

CNH sold $26bn worth of products in 2020 under brands like New Holland and Iveco, the truck business that it is spinning off as part of a plan to double profits.

A few of those heavy-duty trucks have been built without transmissions, as the chip shortage has not left the company wholly unscathed. Wine said CNH would consider holding a larger chip inventory to ensure its suppliers have all the semiconductors they need to feed parts for assembly into the manufacturer’s factories.

CNH has been able to command higher prices for tractors and combines in the first half of the year, offsetting its supply chain difficulties. In North America, CNH products have enjoyed a 6 per cent pricing premium, Wine said, as high commodity prices sharpened demand among farmers.

The question of whether pricing will stay strong in the second half of the year links CNH’s experience to the macroeconomic question being debated on Wall Street and at the Federal Reserve: namely whether a broad surge in prices is “transitory”, as central bank officials forecast, or longer lasting.

Economist Mary Lovely, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said supply chain constraints have left consumers clamouring for goods, including cars and trucks, washers and dryers, and furniture.

“People who haven’t been shopping in a year are out there looking for a new vehicle, or farmers are looking for new equipment,” she said. “Everything is pushing on the demand side when there are actual supply shortages . . . So this is natural. The question is, will this persist?”

Wine said he expects the cost of materials to continue to climb in the second half of the year, but that the company’s pricing power is unlikely to keep pace.

(ZH) Why Is NASA Working So Hard To Learn How To Defend The Earth From Giant Ast

Why Is NASA Working So Hard To Learn How To Defend The Earth From Giant Asteroids?

Did you know that NASA is going to send a spacecraft on a suicide mission in an attempt to change the trajectory of a massive space rock? The good news is that the space rock that NASA will be crashing this spacecraft into is not on a collision course with Earth. It is only a test. But why has NASA suddenly become so concerned with figuring out how to defend the Earth from giant asteroids? Could it be possible that there is something heading toward Earth in the future that they haven’t told us about yet?
According to NASA, there are more than 26,000 asteroids that pass near Earth, and more than 2,000 of them are classified as “potentially dangerous” asteroids.
Most of those “potentially dangerous” asteroids aren’t that large, but 158 of them do have a diameter of more than one kilometer.
If one of those monsters were to hit us, it would be a disaster of cataclysmic proportions.
Of course there are countless other space rocks that our scientists have not discovered yet, and those probably represent the greatest threat. Because if you don’t see a threat coming, you can’t get prepared for it in advance.
These days, NASA officials have become quite preoccupied by the threat that giant space rocks potentially pose, and we are being told that “scientists are at work on a plan to avoid the destruction of Earth by an errant asteroid”. The following comes from an article that was just published by the Boston Globe…
NASA and a cadre of the world’s leading engineers and space scientists are at work on a plan to avoid the destruction of Earth by an errant asteroid like the one 65 million years ago that wiped out the dinosaurs, created a cloud of dust so impenetrable that it blocked out the sun, and plunged the planet into a prolonged winter that sent half of all plant life into extinction.
Personally, I think that this is something that NASA should definitely be focusing on, because the threat is very real.
Most people don’t realize this, but our planet is actually being pelted by space debris on a constant basis at this point. In fact, NASA says that we are being hit by very small objects “every day”…
Every day, Earth is bombarded by tons of dust and sand-sized particles from the solar system. Meteoroids burn up as they enter the Earth’s atmosphere causing little or no damage. They are easy to spot, streaking across the night sky in brilliant, short-lived bursts of light. Of more concern are the asteroids that pass by Earth unnoticed; they are difficult to detect and track as observers depend on reflected sunlight to spot them.
Thankfully, the vast majority of the objects that we encounter are too small to do any damage.
But it is just a matter of time before a really big space rock comes along.
NASA officials like to give the impression that they have a really good idea of what is going on up there, but the truth is that our ability to detect large space rocks is still quite limited. In May, a “potentially hazardous” asteroid that came close to Earth was only discovered about a week before it arrived…
The reason why 2021 KT1 is news is that NASA estimates that it’s between 492 feet/150 meters and 1,082 feet/330 meters in diameter. It wasn’t observed until late in May 2021 just a week before its closest pass.
And late last year a fairly large asteroid was not discovered until it had already buzzed dangerously close to our planet…
Wow. A low-flying space rock set a record last Friday (appropriately, the 13th), when 2020 VT4 passed just under 400 kilometers (250 miles) over the Southern Pacific.
The asteroid was spotted by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) survey at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii in the early morning hours of Saturday, November 14th, just 15 hours after approach. This is not uncommon for fast-movers, especially asteroids that are coming at the Earth from our sunward blind-spot, like 2020 VT4.
So if a major threat is headed our way, we may or may not see it coming in advance.
If we do have advance warning that a huge asteroid is coming, obviously we would want to try to do something about it. With such a scenario in mind, NASA will soon be crashing the DART spacecraft into a giant space rock called Dimorphos…
Developed by a team of scientists from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory and NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office, DART is an unmanned, remotely controlled astronomical suicide mission designed to nudge an asteroid that is half a mile in diameter out of its orbit. Doomsayers take note: This is only a test. The asteroid in question, Didymos — Greek for “twin,” and so named because it was discovered to be paired with its own small moon — is not actually on a collision course with Earth.
Sometime between Thanksgiving week (perhaps as soon as the evening of Nov. 23) and February 2022, the team behind DART will launch it from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The spacecraft will, if all goes according to plan, travel 6.8 million miles to reach and collide with Didymos’s moonlet, Dimorphos, which is 525 feet in diameter.
Is NASA testing out technology that they plan to use on another giant space rock at a later date?
Some have suggested that an asteroid known as Apophis could hit us on April 13th, 2029…
On April 13, 2029 (which happens to be Friday the 13th), something unsettling will happen.
A decent-sized asteroid, the 1,100-foot-wide Apophis, will pass so close to Earth it’ll be visible in the sky from certain places. Crucially, the giant rock will not strike our humble planet. But it will pass closer than 20,000 miles from the surface, which is closer than where some of the United States’ most prized weather satellites orbit.
But NASA insists that Apophis will not hit us “for at least a century”…
After its discovery in 2004, asteroid 99942 Apophis had been identified as one of the most hazardous asteroids that could impact Earth. But that impact assessment changed as astronomers tracked Apophis and its orbit became better determined.
Now, the results from a new radar observation campaign combined with precise orbit analysis have helped astronomers conclude that there is no risk of Apophis impacting our planet for at least a century.
Estimated to be about 1,100 feet (340 meters) across, Apophis quickly gained notoriety as an asteroid that could pose a serious threat to Earth when astronomers predicted that it would come uncomfortably close in 2029. Thanks to additional observations of the near-Earth object (NEO), the risk of an impact in 2029 was later ruled out, as was the potential impact risk posed by another close approach in 2036.
The orbit of Apophis is now very well known by astronomers all over the globe. To me, all of the giant space rocks that are floating around up there that we don’t know about represent a much greater threat.
Unfortunately, the number of large space rocks going by our planet has been steadily increasing, and I believe that there is a good chance that we could see an asteroid impact long before 2029 ever rolls around.
If NASA officials know about such a threat, for now they aren’t admitting that to the public.
But they are admitting that they are trying to figure out how to deflect a very large asteroid, and that should definitely be getting our attention.
* * *
Michael’s new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.

(ZH) Iran: Major Electricity Blackouts During Hot Summer Lead To Growing Anti-Re

Iran: Major Electricity Blackouts During Hot Summer Lead To Growing Anti-Regime Protests

Widespread power outages in Iran which have continued this week have plunged entire cities into darkness and is fueling growing anti-government protests less than a month before hardline judiciary cleric Ebrahim Raisi enters office as president. Frequent power cuts have also high neighboring Iraq, given it's currently reliant for much of its electrical supply on Iran's infrastructure.
Multiple social media videos have spread across the internet which show Iranians chanting "death to the dictator" and other anti-Ayatollah slogans, though the footage can't be verified.
Iranians have over the past months come to expect such disruptions, but starting late Saturday unusually long power outages impacted large swathes of Tehran and nearby Karaj, among others.
The weekend Tehran outage had been unannounced (after for months the country has implemented scheduled power cuts over a severe supply shortage and rising demand), and sparked widespread anger. It went from 11pm Saturday night through early the next morning in the middle of a hot summer.
Iran hawks in the West are seizing upon the protests in an attempt to argue against restoring the JCPOA nuclear deal...
The regional news source Iran International explained that the country's power consumption this summer "has topped 60,000 megawatts per day, a more than ten percent increase compared with last year, while electricity generation has remained the same at 50,000-56,000 megawatts." And further the report notes:
As electricity remains subsidized and cheap, there is no incentive for people to limit its use. It also makes Iran a magnate for cryptocurrency mining by huge computer farms that are consume perhaps up to ten percent of electricity supplies in the country.
In recent months authorities have vowed to disrupt all illegal crypto mining, despite it once being a key way for the country to offset the severe US sanctions blow under the past Trump administration.
The hotter temperatures and growing broad-level frustration has resulted in rare acts of self-criticism by the government, starting with speaker of the parliament Mohammad Qalibaf, who began this week with a written statement acknowledging the "frequent power outages throughout the country and disruption of people’s lives and businesses require planning and management.
"If the increase in consumption and excess demand is not compensated in the short term for any reason, at least stick to the announced blackout schedule so that people can plan for problems," he continued in unusually blunt recognition of the crisis.
And this was followed Tuesday with an unprecedented apology from outgoing president Hassan Rouhani:
In a government meeting broadcast live on state TV, Rouhani acknowledged that chronic power outages over the past week have caused Iranians "plenty of pain" and expressed contrition in an unusually personal speech.
"My apologies to dear people who have faced these problems and pain," he said.
Some Iranian towns are actually experiencing water supply cut offs to boot, given in some places it relies on power to pipe supply.