>>> TradeGate Pre-Market Indications

DAX:
  • VW (VOW3 TH) +1.4%
    • VW to Reveal How Much Its Future Will Revolve Around Batteries
  • Deutsche Telekom (DTE TH) +0.8%
  • Deutsche Boerse (DB1 TH) +0.8%
    • Deutsche Boerse Raised to Buy at HSBC; PT 169 euros
  • Vonovia (VNA TH) +0.7%
  • Fresenius Medical (FME TH) +0.7%
MDAX:
  • MorphoSys (MOR TH) +1.7%
  • Rheinmetall (RHM TH) +1.6%
  • Lufthansa (LHA TH) +1.5%
    • Lufthansa Doubles Flights for Easter in Response to Booking Strength
  • Hugo Boss (BOSS TH) +1.3%
  • Scout24 (G24 TH) +1.2%
SDAX:
  • Home24 (H24 TH) +2.4%
  • LPKF (LPK TH) +1.9%
  • VERBIO Vereinigte (VBK TH) +1.5%
  • DWS (DWS TH) +1.1%
  • ElringKlinger (ZIL2 TH) +1%
  • Takkt (TTK TH) -0.6%
  • Corestate (CCAP TH) -0.9%

>>> Europe : Brokers Upgrades & Downgrades - 15th of March 2021

>>> Up
* Accesso Technology Raised to Buy at Peel Hunt
* Alfa Laval PT Raised to 350 kronor from 281 kronor at Citi
* Bodycote Raised to Equal-Weight at Morgan Stanley; PT 730 pence
* Deutsche Boerse Raised to Buy at HSBC; PT 169 euros
* Deutsche Wohnen Raised to Hold at HSBC; PT 38 euros
* EMS-Chemie Raised to Hold at Stifel; PT 810 Swiss francs
* Eni Raised to Buy at HSBC; PT 12.30 euros
* Entain PLC PT Raised to 1,850 pence at Jefferies
* Ericsson Raised to Buy at SEB Equities; PT 130 kronor
* EUROB GA Raised to Market Perform at KBW; PT 77 euro cents
* Frontier Developments Raised to Buy at Peel Hunt
* Hugo Boss Raised to Add at Baader Helvea; PT 36 euros
* Keywords Studios Raised to Hold at Peel Hunt
* Metro Bank Raised to Hold at Investec; PT 125 pence
* Standard Chartered Raised to Outperform at KBW; PT 550 pence
* Sumo Raised to Buy at Peel Hunt
* Team17 Raised to Buy at Peel Hunt

>>> Down
* dotdigital Cut to Add at Peel Hunt
* Focusrite Cut to Add at Peel Hunt
* NOS Cut to Hold at HSBC; PT 3.20 euros

>>> Initiation
* Auto1 Group Rated New Buy at Goldman; PT 57 euros
* Auto1 Group Rated New Buy at Citi; PT 56 euros
* Auto1 Group Rated New Buy at Deutsche Bank; PT 57 euros
* Auto1 Group Rated New Outperform at RBC; PT 65 euros
* Auto1 Group Rated New Hold at Commerzbank; PT 46 euros
* Boohoo Rated New Buy at Berenberg; PT 460 pence
* Moonpig Rated New Buy at Jefferies; PT 510 pence
* Moonpig Rated New Overweight at JPMorgan; PT 495 pence
* Moonpig Rated New Buy at Citi; PT 550 pence
* Moonpig Rated New Buy at HSBC; PT 510 pence
* Prosus Rated New Buy at Banco Sabadell; PT 140 euros
* Stellantis Rated New Buy at Deutsche Bank; PT 20 euros

>>> Call
* Alfa Laval PT Raised at Citi, Citing Green-Energy Opportunity
* Bodycote Estimates More Reasonable After Reset: Morgan Stanley
* Boohoo Can Maintain Sector-Leading Growth, Margins: Berenberg
* Xiaomi Ruling May See More Firms Challenge U.S. Ban: Jefferies
* Global Value Rotation Trade Still Has 20% Upside, Citi Team Says

(ZH) The US Keeps Losing In Every Simulated War-Game Against China

The US Keeps Losing In Every Simulated War-Game Against China

In the autumn of 2020, the US Air Force held a simulated war game against China, set approximately 10 years in the future.
It began with a biological weapon that quickly dealt with America’s military bases and warships in the Indo-Pacific region.
Then, China staged a massive military exercise to veil a gigantic deployment of an invasion force.
The simulation culminated with Chinese missile strikes raining down on U.S. bases and warships in the region, and a lightning air and amphibious assault on the island of Taiwan.
China won, within a very short timeframe.
This was reportedly part of the classified war game and details are being revealed now.
Around the same time, in real life, in September 2020, actual Chinese combat aircraft intentionally flew over the rarely crossed median line in the Taiwan Strait in the direction of Taipei an “unprecedented 40 times and conducted simulated attacks on the island” that Taiwan’s premier called “disturbing.”
China’s air force released a video showing a bomber capable of carrying nuclear weapons carrying out a simulated attack on Andersen Air Force Base on the U.S. Pacific island of Guam.
The title of the Hollywood-like propaganda video was “The god of war H-6K [bomber] goes on the attack!”
The trend of China getting ahead and the US falling back was accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic.
This month the Council on Foreign Relations released a special report, “The United States, China, and Taiwan: A Strategy to Prevent War.”
It concluded that Taiwan “is becoming the most dangerous flash point in the world for a possible war” between the United States and China.
In Senate testimony, the head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, Adm. Phil Davidson, warned that he believes China might try and annex Taiwan “in this decade, in fact within the next six years.”
Separately, a Chinese think tank recently described tensions in U.S.-China relations as the worst since the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, and it advised Communist Party leaders to prepare for war with the United States.
Apparently, many Americans don’t realize is that years of classified Pentagon war games strongly suggest that the U.S. military would lose that war.
“More than a decade ago, our war games indicated that the Chinese were doing a good job of investing in military capabilities that would make our preferred model of expeditionary warfare, where we push forces forward and operate out of relatively safe bases and sanctuaries, increasingly difficult,” Air Force Lt. Gen. S. Clinton Hinote, deputy chief of staff for strategy, integration and requirements, told Yahoo News in an exclusive interview.
“At that point the trend in our war games was not just that we were losing, but we were losing faster,” Hinote said. “After the 2018 war game I distinctly remember one of our gurus of war gaming standing in front of the Air Force secretary and chief of staff, and telling them that we should never play this war game scenario [of a Chinese attack on Taiwan] again, because we know what is going to happen. The definitive answer if the U.S. military doesn’t change course is that we’re going to lose fast. In that case, an American president would likely be presented with almost a fait accompli.”
The Biden administration recently announced a new Pentagon task force to review U.S. defense policy toward China, to be headed by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.
The deteriorating security of Taiwan will be a major focus of the new task force.
“By the way, three of China’s standing war plans are built around a Taiwan scenario,” Hinote said.
“They’re planning for this. Taiwan is what they think about all the time.”
No matter what, every war game scenario featuring Taiwan ends in the US losing.
“Whenever we war-gamed a Taiwan scenario over the years, our Blue Team routinely got its ass handed to it, because in that scenario time is a precious commodity and it plays to China’s strength in terms of proximity and capabilities,” said David Ochmanek, a senior RAND Corporation analyst and former deputy assistant secretary of defense for force development. “That kind of lopsided defeat is a visceral experience for U.S. officers on the Blue Team, and as such the war games have been a great consciousness-raising device. But the U.S. military is still not keeping pace with Chinese advances. For that reason, I don’t think we’re much better off than a decade ago when we started taking this challenge more seriously.”
Part of the problem is that China advanced its A2/AD strategy while the Pentagon was largely distracted fighting counterterrorism and counterinsurgency wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for two decades.
Beijing is also laser-focused on Taiwan and regional hegemony, while the U.S. military must project power and prepare for potential conflict scenarios all around the globe, giving the Pentagon what Ochmanek calls an “attention deficit disorder.”
Finally, there is the complacency of the perennial winner that makes it hard for senior U.S. military officers to believe that another nation would dare to take them on.
“My response is that China’s growing military confidence is manifesting itself in an increasingly belligerent approach to its neighbors, the growing frequency of the PLA’s violation of the airspace of Taiwan and Japan, and the bullying of other neighbors in the South China Sea,” said Ochmanek. “Under Xi Jinping there has been a dramatic increase in such provocations compared to a decade ago, and I think it’s grounded in his belief that militarily, China is strong enough now to credibly challenge us.”
In the most recent war game, the Pentagon tested the impact of potential capabilities and military concepts that are still on the drawing board in many cases.
The Blue Team, which represented U.S. forces, adopted a more defensive and dispersed posture less reliant on large, vulnerable bases, ports and aircraft carriers in a conflict with the Red Team, which represented China.
The strategy strongly favored large numbers of long-range, mobile strike systems, to include anti-ship cruise missile batteries, mobile rocket artillery systems, unmanned mini-submarines, mines and robust surface-to-air missile batteries for air defense. A premium was put on surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities for both early warning and accurate intelligence to enable quicker decisions by U.S. policymakers, and a more capable command-and-control system to coordinate the actions of more dispersed forces.
“We created a force that had resiliency at its core, and the Red Team looked at that force and knew that it would take a tremendous amount of firepower to knock it out,” said Hinote. The biggest insight of the war game, he said, was revealed when he talked afterward with the Red Team leader, who played the role of the PLA’s top general.
“The Red Team leader is the most experienced and aggressive officer in these war games across the Defense Department, and when he initially looked at the resiliency of our defensive posture both in Taiwan and the region, he said, ‘No, I’m not going to attack,’” recalled Hinote. “If we can design a force that creates that level of uncertainty and causes Chinese leaders to question whether they can accomplish their goals militarily, I think that’s what deterrence looks like in the future.”
On a sober note, Hinote pointed out that the Blue Team force posture tested in the recent war game is still not the one reflected in current Defense Department spending plans.
“We’re beginning to understand what kind of U.S. military force it’s going to take to achieve the National Defense Strategy’s goals,” he said. “But that’s not the force we’re planning and building today.”
Maybe one day the US will win in a simulation against China.

The Verge : Judge rules Google has to face lawsuit that claims it tracks users e

Judge rules Google has to face lawsuit that claims it tracks users even in Incognito mode
The plaintiffs allege Google collects personal data even if users put privacy controls in place

A judge in California ruled Friday that Google has to face a class action lawsuit that claims the search giant secretly collects data from users even when they’re using its private “Incognito” mode, Bloomberg reported.

Three users filed a complaint last June alleging Google has a “pervasive data tracking business,” and its tracking persists even if users take steps to protect their private information, such as using incognito mode in Chrome, or private browsing in Safari and other browsers. The lawsuit seeks at least $5 billion.

Google had sought to have the case thrown out, but US District Judge Lucy Koh wrote in her ruling that the company “did not notify users that Google engages in the alleged data collection while the user is in private browsing mode.”

The company said in a court filing that it makes clear to users “that ‘Incognito’ does not mean ‘invisible,’ and that the user’s activity during that session may be visible to websites they visit, and any third-party analytics or ads services the visited websites use.”

Google spokesperson José Castañeda said in an email to The Verge on Saturday that the company disputes the lawsuit’s claims “and we will defend ourselves vigorously against them.” He added that Chrome’s Incognito mode gives users the choice to browse the internet without activity being saved to their browser or devices. “As we clearly state each time you open a new incognito tab, websites might be able to collect information about your browsing activity during your session.”

Google said earlier this year it is phasing out third-party tracking cookies, and says it doesn’t plan to replace the cookies with something that may be as invasive even though it will affect the company’s advertising business.

>>> Weekend Papers Summary : NYT, WSJ, FT, NYP.

Weekend Papers Summary
NEW YORK TIMES
Saturday
• Facing calls to resign from New York’s US senators and the majority of its House Democrats, governor Andrew Cuomo said he wouldn’t step down, referring to pressure from his own party as “cancel culture.”
• President Biden, under pressure to donate excess coronavirus vaccines to needy nations, will address the global shortage in another way by partnering with Japan, India, and Australia to expand global vaccine manufacturing capacity.
• State and local health departments around the country continue to face delays dispensing Covid shots, in part because flaws remain in the appointment software, even as supplies and distribution are picking up quickly across the country.
• The American willingness to deploy so-called secondary sanctions that punish European and other countries that do business with targeted countries such as Russia and Iran continues to be a sore point in the EU, which finds itself in the middle.
• More than 715 refugees from around the world who expected to start new lives in the US had their flights canceled because Biden postponed an overhaul of Trump’s sharp limits on new admissions.• With dining room restrictions in place during the pandemic, drive-through and pickup windows helped restaurants survive—and as the crisis eases, many believe digital ordering and drive-through lanes will remain critical to their future success.
Sunday
• The stimulus bill is “a poverty-fighting initiative of potentially historic proportions, delivering more immediate cash assistance to families at the bottom of the income scale than any federal legislation since at least the New Deal.”
•After months of professional and Main Street investors boosting the stock and real estate prices, the frenzy has spilled over into risky assets, including digital ephemera and media, cryptocurrencies, and collectibles like trading cards and even sneakers.
• Tucked into the $1.9T pandemic rescue law is nearly $3B earmarked for private schools, the result of lobbying by Orthodox Jews in New York, who convinced senator Chuck Schumer to include it against the wishes of other Democrats and public school leaders.
• The pandemic will change things for many taxpayers this year—new rules regarding stimulus payments, retirement withdrawals, unemployment insurance, and other factors could cut tax bills or even generate extra refunds.

WALL STREET JOURNAL
Weekend
• “Contagion is rising again in much of the EU, despite months of restrictions on daily life, as more-virulent virus strains outpace vaccinations,” creating frustration as governments struggle to manage the problem after promising that lockdowns would soon end.
• “As the rollout of Covid-19 vaccines quickens and the economy bounces back from last year’s shutdowns, portfolio managers are snapping up shares of cyclical companies,” giving value investors a reason to celebrate, at least for now.
• Story on the problems at Greensill Bank reports founder Lex Greensill “pushed beyond the safe but barely profitable supply-chain finance business—many loans went to a small circle of borrowers close to him, as well as to acquaintances and his biggest outside backers.”
• The Biden administration wants India to join a network of countries to counter China, though US officials need to smooth over disagreements that include human rights and New Delhi’s acquisition of a Russian defense system.
• “President Biden’s direction to states to make all adults eligible for coronavirus vaccines by May 1 will pressure governors and local officials to increase the pace of their rollouts, as the US surpassed 100 million vaccinations on Friday.”
• The House began discussing legislation that would help newspapers, television stations, and other news outlets that have seen their revenue siphoned away by online platforms could get an assist from Congress.
• Health authorities in the United Arab Emirates have begun administering a third dose of Chinese-made Covid shots from Sinopharm after doctors said some recipients hadn’t generated enough protective antibodies.
• Richard Branson’s Virgin Orbit has hired bankers to help it go public this year through a special-purpose acquisition company, his latest effort to take advantage of a recent boom in similar, blank-check listings.
• Regulators are pressuring Wall Street to do away with the London interbank offered rate, or Libor, by year-end, and companies are choosing between alternatives to the troubled borrowing benchmark and discussing the timing and financial implications.
• H.O.T.S.: “The vaunted ability of pharmaceutical companies to name their own price is vanishing as middlemen increasingly call the shots”; Households and companies are in better shape after this recession than after past ones, but wealth remains unevenly distributed; T “promises to keep its crucial dividend while facing growing investment demands in 5G and streaming.”

FINANCIAL TIMES
Weekend
• Front page story reports “The US has crafted a plan with Japan, India, and Australia to provide one billion doses of Covid-19 vaccine to southeast Asian nations in an effort to counter Chinese influence in the Indo-Pacific.”
• +/- DB: “The bank faces an investor backlash after handling out a 46 percent rise in bonuses to its investment bankers despite a freeze in dividend payments as it returns to annual profit for the first time in six year.”
• +/- AZN: Major shortfalls in the company’s coronavirus vaccine supplies to the EU are partly due to the failure of a Dutch factory run by Halix to deliver doses six month after the contract was signed because EU regulators haven’t approved it.
• Spain established a €11B program to help companies hit hard by the pandemic remain solvent after growing concerns that previous loans targeting businesses were leaving them heavily in debt.
• Italian prime minister Mario Draghi said his government will launch a new economic package to support Italy during new Covid-19 lockdown measures that are set to be imposed in the coming weeks to counter a surge in new cases.
• The Biden administration is taking a stronger approach to the coup in Myanmar by agreeing to offer temporary protected status to the country’s nationals living in the US, including several diplomats, who will have protected status for 18 months.
• Big Read piece says “Joe Biden’s stimulus plan that passed this week cements a leftward shift, giving the White House a greater role in society—and some Democrats hope it could develop into a full rejection of free-market Reaganism.”
• Lex Column: Banks should exercise restraint in 2020 bonuses, given the fact the sector’s social contract is constantly being rewritten; If Burberry stumbles again, it risks becoming a takeover target; Growing Paramount Plus while making sure viewers maintain cable subscriptions, and tune into revenue-producing CBS shows, won’t be easy for VIAC.
• Comment: The human capacity to have children is in steep decline, as evidenced by a shocking 50 percent decline in sperm count since 1970 and an equally rapid increase in age-adjusted miscarriage rates, says Jeremy Grantham.

NEW YORK POST
Saturday
• +/- AMZN: Republican senator Marco Rubio of Florida is backing a labor union in its battle with the e-commerce giant, a rare instance of a conservative Republican supporting organized labor over a mega-rich corporation.
• +/- RIDE: Hindenburg Research, which last year published a damning report on electric-truck maker NKLA, has now hit Lordstown Motors over what it claims are false pre-orders for the company’s upcoming pickup truck.
Sunday
• In a recent study, physicist Erik Lentz outlined a way that a rocket could theoretically travel faster than light—or over 186,000 miles per second—which would allow astronauts to reach other star systems in just a few years.
• + T: The company said it anticipates massive growth from its new HBO Max streaming service as it expands internationally and offers a cheaper, ad-free option.

WSJ Opinion : The Semiconductor Shortage

The Semiconductor Shortage
Do we really want government getting into the chip business?

A global computer chip shortage has constrained worldwide production of goods from iPhones to Sony PlayStations to Ford trucks. President Biden has called for $37 billion from Congress to boost U.S. semiconductor manufacturing, but government industrial policy isn’t needed to correct this supply-demand problem.

A new executive order mandates a 100-day review of supply chains for semiconductors and three other “critical” products including electric-car batteries. “Resilient, diverse, and secure supply chains are going to help revitalize our domestic manufacturing capacity and create good-paying jobs, not $15 an hour—which is what we need to do someday,” Mr. Biden said.

Secure and resilient supply chains are important, but the President is trying to exploit domestic manufacturing problems to promote industrial policy as Donald Trump did with steel and aluminum tariffs.

The economic backdrop for Mr. Biden’s order is a chip shortage that has idled auto plants in the U.S. and abroad. Cars have become like smartphones on wheels and can include thousands of chips—electric vehicles even more. IHS Markit recently projected the shortage will affect global production of a million vehicles in the first quarter.

Governments helped create the chip shortage, starting with their lockdowns last spring. Auto makers reduced orders for new chips as car purchases plunged. They didn’t anticipate how demand for cars would rebound, fueled by trillions of dollars in government spending and near-zero interest rates. Germany and China also increased electric-vehicle subsidies.

Meantime, manufacturers pivoted to more profitable chips that power laptops, consumer electronics and data centers. Demand for these chips has surged amid the pandemic and will grow in the 5G era, which will enable artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things.

So foundries worldwide are scrambling to fulfill orders, and auto makers are a low priority. U.S., Japanese and European auto makers have sought help from their governments to procure more chips. These supply-chain problems should ease this summer, but semiconductor firms are using the scramble for chips to lobby Washington to support domestic manufacturing. This isn’t necessary.

Silicon Valley companies used to design and manufacture their own chips. But most leading U.S. semiconductor companies like Nvidia and Qualcomm have sought to focus on their strength in design and outsource manufacturing—namely, to Samsung and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC).

Intel —among the last remaining large U.S. integrated chip companies—is under pressure from investors to farm out more production and focus on design where it has lost a competitive edge. China, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea account for about 75% of chip manufacturing capacity in part due to their skilled workforce, geographic supply-chain synergies and government subsidies.

While U.S. companies make up nearly half of global chip sales, America accounts for only 12% of global chip manufacturing. America’s comparative chip advantage is engineering, and those jobs are high-paying.

Some defense experts understandably worry that China will absorb Taiwan and impose an embargo on TSMC chips, which are used in U.S. fighter jets. China has set a goal of dominating semiconductor manufacturing—it now makes about 15%—and producing 70% of its own supply by 2025. But it is still years behind.

The Trump Administration last spring used soft power and promised subsidies to persuade TSMC to build a $12 billion plant in Arizona. Congress last year authorized incentives in the National Defense Authorization Act without appropriating funds. And now Mr. Biden is lobbying Congress for $37 billion.

But new plants are expensive, one reason manufacturing has consolidated. Twenty years ago a chip plant cost $1 billion. TSMC is constructing a nearly $20 billion foundry in southern Taiwan. Samsung, which manufactures some chips in the Austin region, is seeking subsidies from some states for a $17 billion foundry. Europe’s leaders have also dangled tens of billions of dollars to boost their domestic industries. This could soon become an expensive bidding war.

If U.S. semiconductor firms that farm out chip production are worried about their supply chains, they and the U.S. government can prod TSMC and Samsung to diversify their manufacturing base. U.S. companies have significant clout as the world depends on them for cutting-edge chip designs. The U.S. accounts for 50% of chip manufacturing equipment and 52% of intellectual property design.

But direct U.S. government support for industry outside of war or other emergency is a slippery slope. It invites political mediation that leads to the misallocation of resources and investing mistakes. The U.S. government can help to ensure adequate chip supply without getting into the chip business

WSJ : Lilly Alzheimer’s Drug Shows Modest Benefit in Clinical Trial

Lilly Alzheimer’s Drug Shows Modest Benefit in Clinical Trial
Intravenous infusion targets substance that forms plaques in brain and is a key concern as disease worsens

An Eli Lilly LLY 1.40% & Co. experimental drug modestly slowed the cognitive and functional decline of early-stage Alzheimer’s patients over 18 months in a small, midstage clinical study.

Though more testing is needed to validate the drug’s benefit, the finding was a promising one in a research field that has seen numerous failures in attempts to find a better treatment for the dementia-causing disease.

The Indianapolis-based company has begun a second clinical study of the drug, and it is in discussions with regulators about what evidence would be needed for marketing approval. Analysts said a drug proven to slow the decline of Alzheimer’s patients would have high demand and could garner huge sales.

“These results are encouraging,” said Maria Carrillo, chief science officer of the Alzheimer’s Association, a nonprofit that funds research. “What we really need is to follow people for more time” to see if the apparent benefit holds up, she added.

Current Alzheimer’s treatments only temporarily relieve symptoms but don’t slow or halt the underlying worsening of disease, which affects about six million Americans. Lilly and other companies have been trying to find treatments that can slow, halt or even reverse the decline.

Lilly’s drug, donanemab, is an intravenous infusion that targets amyloid, a substance that forms plaques in the brain and is a prime suspect in fueling the worsening of Alzheimer’s. The drug is designed to clear amyloid.

Lilly released preliminary results of a Phase 2 study of donanemab in January.

On Saturday, the company released full results of the trial during the virtual International Conference on Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s Diseases and published them in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The study enrolled more than 250 patients in the U.S. and Canada with early symptoms of Alzheimer’s who had evidence from imaging scans of amyloid and another substance called tau in their brains. About half received donanemab and the others received a placebo once a month for up to 72 weeks.

Researchers gave patients various tests at the start of the study to assess their cognitive and functional abilities, and then again 76 weeks after the start of treatment to detect changes. At baseline, the average score from these tests was 106 in both groups.

At 76 weeks, the scores of the patients in the placebo group dropped by an average of 10.06, while falling by 6.86 for those who took donanemab, for a 32% slowing of the decline.

Researchers said in the New England Journal of Medicine that the improvement was statistically significant but that it fell short of their goal of showing that donanemab would slow patients’ decline by 50%.

The Lilly drug appeared to slow patients’ declines using other measures in secondary analyses in the study. But the benefits in several of these secondary analyses at 76 weeks weren’t statistically significant, meaning no firm conclusions could be drawn. This included a disease-staging scale known as CDR-SB, which has been a more common measure of effectiveness in Alzheimer’s drug studies than the main measure that Lilly used in its study.

Lilly Chief Scientific Officer Dan Skovronsky said the results appeared to show that patients who received the drug had about the same level of cognitive skills after 18 months of treatment as the placebo recipients had after 12 months.

“We slowed the disease down by about a third,” he said. “In an 18-month study we’ve given them six months of less decline. Of course it’s a 10-year disease. The question is over 10 years could you give them back three years.”

Patients receiving donanemab experienced side effects such as amyloid-related swelling in the brain.

FT : PsiQuantum expects commercial quantum computer by 2025

PsiQuantum expects commercial quantum computer by 2025
Confidence driven by manufacturing partnership with GlobalFoundries

A secretive quantum computing company set up in California by four UK university physicists is set to reveal the technology it has developed over the past five years with $215m venture capital funding.

PsiQuantum will build an ultra-powerful commercial computer based on photonics by the middle of this decade, its founders said, as they prepare to emerge from “stealth mode”.

Underlying the company’s confidence is a manufacturing partnership with GlobalFoundries, one of the world’s leading semiconductor makers, which is making chips for PsiQuantum at its plants in the US and Germany.

“We’re now at a point where we have solved the critical roadblocks on the path to building a quantum computer with a million qubits, the scale required for all known useful commercial applications,” said Jeremy O’Brien, chief executive of PsiQuantum.

Quantum bits or qubits are the basic units of information in quantum computers. Unlike the binary bits of classical computing, which must be either zero or one, qubits exploit the weird and counterintuitive properties of quantum physics to be both at the same time.

By exploiting this “superposition” principle, quantum computers could in principle solve problems far beyond the ability of the most powerful conventional supercomputers, from modelling chemical reactions to searching gigantic databases.

PsiQuantum is part of a crowded landscape of start-up and established companies trying to overcome the formidable challenge of turning lab demonstrations into quantum computers that work reliably on a range of real world problems.

Hermann Hauser, the veteran technology investor and co-founder of Amadeus Capital, said PsiQuantum is one of 193 quantum computing start-ups round the world. He took a small personal stake in PsiQuantum when it was getting started — and helped to persuade the company’s founders to move from the UK to Silicon Valley because access to capital was better there. But Amadeus has invested in three other quantum companies with quite different approaches, he added.

“Jeremy and his brilliant team have their nose out in front because of their relationship with GlobalFoundries and their level of funding,” said Hauser. “But there are many uncertainties. Quantum computing hasn’t settled yet, even at the lowest level, what sort of hardware it will use.”

Until very recently, quantum computing research was dominated by technologies that manipulated the quantum states of electrons found in charged atomic particles or flowing through superconducting circuits. But PsiQuantum uses optical technology, exploiting the quantum properties of photons (light particles) rather than electronics — an approach that is gaining support within the industry.

O’Brien, whose research on optical quantum computing over 12 years at the University of Bristol laid the foundations for PsiQuantum, said: “Large, modular systems can only be built through photonics. Our first system, the Q-1, solves the scaling problems common to all approaches to quantum computing: manufacturability, cooling power, connectivity and control electronics.”

His co-founder Pete Shadbolt contrasted PsiQuantum’s whole-system approach with competitors that have built smaller devices using a few tens of qubits. These can perform spectacular feats within very narrow constraints — including demonstrating “quantum supremacy” by carrying out specific computations that are beyond the capability of any conventional computer — but cannot be scaled up to more powerful and flexible machines, he said.

Although PsiQuantum plans to operate its Q-1 machine with a million qubits, the vast majority of these will be used for error correction rather than actual data processing, because meaningful signals have to be extracted from a lot of “noise” in any quantum system.

Quantum computers will inevitably be large in size. “Anyone who is dreaming of a benchtop quantum computer is really dreaming,” Shadbolt said. “Any usable quantum computer is going to be a room-sized data centre.” Users will connect to it via the internet.

PsiQuantum “is working with customers across the pharmaceutical, clean energy, aerospace, transportation, finance, and high-tech industries,” according to O’Brien, although no customer is ready to be identified.

John Martinis, who headed Google’s quantum computer programme until last year and is now working with Silicon Quantum Computing, an Australian start-up using quite different technology, offers cautious praise for PsiQuantum.

“They have a good approach to understanding how to build a quantum computer from a systems point of view and they have the basic ideas covered,” Martinis said. “The one thing that I’m waiting for is to see more data on how the components are working, and what happens when they start integrating the components to build a system. All quantum computer approaches look great on paper.”

Shadbolt promised that people will hear much more about PsiQuantum in future. “I think the reputation of our company is a moody bunch of people who don’t say much,” he said. “The time has come for us to talk about what we’re doing.”

>>> Barron’s Weekend Summary: As the pandemic wanes, fiscal stimulus and low int

Barron’s Weekend Summary: As the pandemic wanes, fiscal stimulus and low interest rates will drive growth—but the environment won’t be easy for investors to navigate

* Cover Story: As the coronavirus pandemic wanes, “the combination of trillions of dollars of fiscal stimulus, ultralow interest rates, and a newfound sense of liberation means the US economy in coming months will be unlike any the country has experienced in decades. Growth will be faster. Inflation will run hotter. The job market could bounce back more speedily than even the Fed expects. This environment won’t be easy for investors to navigate, as a likely rise in interest rates and a rebound in economically sensitive stocks” will pose challenges.

* Tech Trader: Positive on CPNG: The South Korea based e-commerce stock that went public this week resembles AMZN in many ways, but has important geographical advantages, including the country’s high-density, which allows the company to be super responsive, while its use of reusable containers to ship and its easy return policy will pay off.

* Trader: Rising interest rates and what they signal about rising inflation are the reason for volatility, but aren’t a signal that investors should sell now—the market could well rise higher still, though the leading stocks might be different from those that led the market to records in 2020.

* Interview: Richard Aboulafia, vice president of analysis at Teal Group, who provides Wall Street analysts and portfolio managers with projections for commercial aviation and defense sales, talks about BA and whether it can recover from the 787 MAX debacle, and provides his outlook on commercial aerospace in a post-pandemic world and on the companies best-positioned to thrive, such as RTX, NOC, LMT, HWM, and Safran.

* Profile: Thomas O’Halloran, manager of the Lord Abbett Growth Leaders fund, says he and his team are “fundamental analysts who are guided by charts” and who “integrate several price-momentum measurements to gauge rising and falling price trends into their fundamental research,” allowing them to hold large positions in as many large growth-stock winners as possible (top 10 holdings: AAPL, AMZN, MSFT, TSLA, GOOGL, ROKU, NVDA, UBER, QCOM, PINS).

* Features: 1) Though the global drug industry pivoted quickly to deal with the pandemic when it hit, with companies such as PFE and JNJ quickly developing vaccines, investors have instead focused on companies that will benefit when the economy opens up—making drug stocks “one of the best pockets of value in a richly priced stock market”; 2) Positive on WD: The company is a rising star in financing the multi-family home market—Bill Hench of the Royce Opportunity fund says it trades at a discount given its 15 percent growth rate, and is small enough that it could potentially become a big commercial lender; 3) The professionals on Barron’s annual list of the country’s Top 1,200 Advisors in each of the 50 states have an average tenure in the industry of 30 years and, with their teams, typically serve 750 households, each of which has an average of $14M to invest; Each advisor manages about $3B in total, and has an average retention rate of about 98 percent; Related stories profile advisors on the list, including Walter Gondeck of The Lerner Group, Jennifer Marcontell of Edward Jones, Charles Zhang of Zhang Financial, Daniel Fries of Merrill Lynch, Mark Wilkins of UBS Private Wealth Management, Thais Piotrowski of Ameriprise Financial, and Kathleen Roeser of Morgan Stanley Wealth Management; 4) Wall Street doesn’t expect a continuation of the volatility that started in late February, when soaring yields helped fuel a correction in the Nasdaq as investors discounted companies’ future stock returns at higher rates, but many market observers do expect yields to continue to rise, pushing bond prices lower, which has important implications for fixed-income investors; 5) The initial public offering market is in the midst of the kind of exuberance it hasn’t seen in about 20 years, but not everybody is happy with the boom in new issues—some IPO investors are growing more cautious about what they see as super-frothy valuations; 6) The experience of the founders of special purpose acquisition company Pine Technology Acquisition, which is registering to raise $345M with the help of underwriter Cantor Fitzgerald, may give investors pause—they previously ran a company called AmTrust, which lost about three-quarters of its stock market value as it revised down reported profits and remedied inadequate loss reserves.

* European Trader: Positive on Moncler: The Italian luxury goods company, known for its puffer jacket, “has a rich valuation but could still be poised for growth thanks to a focus on China and a push for younger customers.”

* Emerging Markets: Homegrown emerging market startups such as South Korea’s CPNG, Poland’s Allegro, and Russia’s OZON are holding their own with AMZN and BABA—and they are benefiting from growing competition the emerging markets digital technology sector, which is driving new levels of innovation.

* Commodities: “Rare-earth metals are used to make just about everything, from smartphones and display panels, to speakers and televisions, and while China currently dominates the market for these commodities, the US has taken interest—and resource investors should too.”

* Streetwise: Columnist Alex Eule assembled a Nostalgia Index, a basket of companies that should have been disrupted by technology but have managed to endure; the list includes VIAC, BNED, GCI, FOSL, PBI, WW, DLX, CNK, HRB, and MAT.