Gov. Holcomb 'objects' to Indiana taking toxic waste from Ohio train derailment

 Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb said in a tweet Tuesday that he continues to object to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's decision to move hazardous waste from the Ohio train derailment to Indiana.

He also said there has been a "lack of communication" with him and other Indiana officials about this decision.

The federal agency announced Monday that a landfill in a small Indiana town less than 50 miles west of Indianapolis will receive some of the contaminated waste from the toxic train wreck in East Palestine, Ohio.

After concerns were raised on where the hazardous waste was going — towns in Michigan and Texas complained they didn't receive notice — the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency paused the shipments to provide some oversight to the disposal plan. The shipments resumed on Monday, and the agency announced some of it would be heading to Indiana.

The Indiana site in question: A landfill in Roachdale, a small town in Putnam County.

In his tweets, Holcomb said that he also learned "third-hand that materials may be transported to our state." He said that he directed the state's environmental director to reach out to the agency and he has requested to speak with an EPA official on the topic.

"I want to know exactly what precautions will be taken in the transport and disposition of the materials," Holcomb said in his tweets.

He said he believes that the hazardous waste materials should go to the nearest disposal facilities and not be moved "from the far eastern side of Ohio to the far western side of Indiana."

Ohio, Indiana receiving contaminated materials 

EPA officials had previously said they approved shipments to two agency-certified sites in Ohio. On Monday, EPA Region 5 Administrator Debra Shore said an additional site in Ohio and one in Indiana had also been selected to receive contaminated soil and liquids from the train wreck.

Roachdale has a population of approximately 1,000 and spans an area of less than one square mile, according to town website. The community was named after Judge Roach, a railroad official, and is home to local businesses, a library, churches and an elementary school.

It is unclear at this time what type of waste — toxic soil or liquids — and in what amounts will be housed in the Roachdale landfill. IndyStar has reached out to the EPA for additional information.

The landfill itself is located about seven miles outside of the Indiana town.

Roachdale landfill is RCRA-certified

The landfill is operated by Heritage Environmental Services and is a RCRA-certified facility. The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, or RCRA, is a law that governing the proper management of hazardous and non-hazardous solid waste.

On its website, Heritage said that it has roughly 14 million cubic yards of permitted landfill capacity, and added that its landfill is geologically isolated.

The EPA said it is now getting close to having enough certified facilities to take all the waste that was produced at the site of the Feb. 3 derailment in East Palestine. Several toxic chemicals, including vinyl chloride and others, were released into the nearby water, soil and air. Clean-up has been ongoing in the weeks since.

EPA Region 5 administrator Shore also said that she spoke with officials from both Ohio and Indiana regarding the hazardous waste shipments to their towns.

https://www.indystar.com/story/news/environment/2023/02/28/roachdale-indiana-landfill-will-house-toxic-waste-from-east-palestine-ohio-train-derailment/69952976007/

Sarissa Capital Wins Proxy Contest Against Amarin by Huge Landslide

 Sarissa Capital Management LP today issued the following statement regarding Amarin Corporation plc (NASDAQ: AMRN):

Amarin shareholders have sent a loud and clear message repudiating the incumbent Amarin board. Sarissa thanks fellow shareholders for their support in a resounding victory against the Amarin board. Our estimate is that up to nearly 80% of shareholder votes were in support of Sarissa. As Amarin’s largest shareholder, we are grateful for the opportunity to remake Amarin for the benefit of all shareholders.

Vascepa, the foundation on which Amarin is built, is a tremendous drug that is compelling for patients and payors – a unique proposition for a drug. While there is a lot of work to be done, we remain confident in our ability to leverage Vascepa’s rare and highly beneficial profile to unlock tremendous value for all shareholders.

LET’S GET TO WORK AND FINALLY BEGIN RUNNING AMARIN FOR THE BENEFIT OF ALL SHAREHOLDERS!

Additional Information

Sarissa Capital Management LP ("Sarissa Capital"), together with other participants, filed a definitive proxy statement and an accompanying blue proxy card with the SEC on January 31, 2023, in connection with the solicitation of shareholders of Amarin Corporation plc (the "Company") at the general meeting of the Company for the election of Sarissa Capital’s slate of highly-qualified nominees (the "General Meeting"). Shareholders are advised to read the definitive proxy statement and other relevant documents related to the General Meeting as they contain important information.

The definitive proxy statement and other relevant documents are available at no charge on the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov and at www.freeamarin.com. The definitive proxy statement and other relevant documents are also available at no charge by directing a request to Sarissa Capital’s proxy solicitor, D.F. King & Co., Inc., 48 Wall Street, New York, New York 10005 (Shareholders can call toll-free: (800) 331-7024).

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/sarissa-capital-wins-proxy-contest-153900586.html

Musk looks to develop AI rival to ‘woke’ ChatGPT: report

 Elon Musk is seeking to enlist the help of artificial intelligence experts in order to create a rival to OpenAI’s ChatGPT bot which the tech mogul believes has gone “woke,” according to a report.

Musk has approached several AI researchers, including Igor Babuschkin, who recently departed Alphabet’s DeepMind AI unit, according to the news site The Information.

A new, AI-center project that would feature a chatbot with fewer speech restrictions could be integrated into Twitter, the social media company that Musk recently bought.

The move comes as Musk has been critical of OpenAI, the research lab which created ChatGPT and which counts Musk as one of its founders. Musk cut ties with OpenAI in 2015 due to disagreements with leadership over the entity’s nonprofit status.

In a recent tweet, Musk lamented that OpenAI was “training AI to be woke.” He has been critical of OpenAI for filtering out harmful content from the data so as to make ChatGPT less violent, sexist, and racist.

Elon Musk is reportedly looking to create an alternative to OpenAI’s “woke” ChatGPT.

REUTERS

The guardrails were put in place due to concerns that the algorithms that underpin ChatGPT were biased towards marginalized groups.

Musk, who acquired Twitter for $44 billion with the aim of promoting unfettered speech, has hinted at the need for a chatbot which would rival ChatGPT as well as Microsoft’s chatbot.

Earlier this month, a Twitter user posted a screenshot of a chat with Bing in which the bot declined to tell a joke “in the style of Dave Chappelle” due to the comedian’s “offensive” and “insensitive” remarks about “certain groups of people.”

Bing wrote that “humor should be fun and inclusive, not hurtful and divisive.” That prompted Musk to reply: “What we need is TruthGPT.”

Since unveiling “Twitter 2.0,” Musk has unbanned several controversial figures, including former President Donald Trump, author Jordan Peterson, and the satirical news site Babylon Bee.

Musk’s second foray into AI coincides with Snapchat’s announcement that it, too, will be rolling out its own chatbot powered by ChatGPT, according to The Verge.

Snapchat users will notice the “My AI” bot pinned to the app’s chat tab above conversations with friends.

Initially, the new feature will be available to subscribers of Snapchat Plus’ $3.99 a month service, but Snap CEO Evan Spiegel told The Verge that the goal is to eventually make the bot available to all of the app’s 750 million monthly users.

https://nypost.com/2023/02/28/elon-musk-to-develop-ai-rival-to-woke-chatgpt-report/

Why Pfizer (and others) will be interested in Seagen

 If the rumours are true a second big pharma name, Pfizer, is interested in Seagen. The biotech’s portfolio of cancer drugs is the attraction, and it is easy to see why Seagen might be on radar: there are very few assets not already in the hands of a large developer that offer the possibility of imminent and sizeable sales growth. The table below ranks cancer drugs with blockbuster potential by forecast annualised growth, based on Evaluate Pharma’s sellside consensus. Seagen’s Padcev and Tukysa both feature in the top 10. Analysts reckon sales of Seagen's first approved drug, Adcetris, could hit $1.6bn by 2028; having been launched back in 2011 this boasts only an 11% CAGR, though sales of this size would still be appealing for those facing patent expiries. True, several of these products still have much to prove. Forecasts for Mirati’s Krazati and Blueprint’s Ayvakit, for example, surely reflect best-case scenarios. But this analysis underscores a scarcity value for Seagen that will certainly attract others. Settling on an agreeable valuation will be the hard part here. Merck & Co reportedly walked away last year over price, and the same outcome a second time cannot be ruled out.

Searching for scarcity value: fast-growing cancer drugs
Product	Company	CAGR sales growth, 2023-28	2028 sales ($bn)
Datopotamab deruxtecan	Daiichi Sankyo	+84%	2.0
Krazati	Mirati Therapeutics	+78%	1.6
Tecvayli	Johnson & Johnson	+64%	1.4
Carvykti	Johnson & Johnson	+46%	4.1
Rybrevant	Johnson & Johnson	+39%	1.0
Ayvakit	Blueprint Medicines	+38%	1.2
Padcev	Seagen	+37%	3.3
Breyanzi	Bristol Myers Squibb	+30%	1.5
Tukysa	Seagen	+29%	1.6
Opdualag	Bristol Myers Squibb	+28%	1.8
Source: Evaluate Pharma. https://www.evaluate.com/vantage/articles/news/deals-snippets/why-pfizer-and-others-will-be-interested-seagen

Truist Securities Adjusts Price Target on SI-Bone to $26 From $21

 Maintains Buy 

https://www.marketscreener.com/quote/stock/SI-BONE-INC-46661554/news/Truist-Securities-Adjusts-Price-Target-on-SI-Bone-to-26-From-21-Maintains-Buy-Rating-43112241/

'Buying stocks is just not worth the risk today'

 After being written off as irrelevant for much of the past decade, the equity risk premium, a gauge of the potential reward investors might reap from buying stocks, has fallen to its lowest level since 2007.

To some, this means U.S. stocks are no longer worth the risk now that investors can reap returns of 5% or more by buying short-dated Treasurys and other high-grade bonds.

In the years that followed the financial crisis, many investors disregarded the ERP as U.S. stocks moved reliably higher, their valuations bolstered by rock-bottom interest rates imposed by the Federal Reserve.

Some investors had a name for this phenomenon: TINA, which stands for "There Is No Alternative" -- meaning that, with bond yields so low, investors were highly motivated to put their money to work in the stock market.

Now the situation has reversed. As inflation and expectations of a more difficult economic environment weigh on expectations for corporate profits, the nearly guaranteed returns offered by Treasurys has soared. This means the equity risk premium is once again finding use as a gauge of relative value for stocks, since it can offer helpful insights about what investors stand to gain over the short term by taking the additional risk that comes with buying stocks, or investing in stock funds.

Methods for calculating the ERP vary. Some economists like to include measures of inflation in their calculation to produce what's known as the "real" equity risk premium ("real" in this case means the figure is adjusted for inflation, which is subtracted from the bond yields used in the equation).

Others simply use analysts' forecasts for how much profit S&P 500 companies are expected to earn over the coming 12 months.

As of Friday's close, the equity risk premium stood at 1.7%, according to FactSet data.

Investors can arrive at this figure by taking Wall Street's projected earnings per share over the next year for the S&P 500 -- in this case $221.68, according to FactSet data -- and divide it by the level of the S&P 500, which stood at around 3,970 as of Friday's close. The result is multiplied by 100, to arrive at roughly 5.6%. Investors then subtract the current risk-free rate -- in this case, the 10-year Treasury yield, which stands at 3.920% -- to reach the final figure.

"That's not that much," said Liz Young, head of investment strategy at SoFi, who spoke with MarketWatch after sharing a chart of the ERP on Twitter.

"Basically, what it's telling you is you have to pay a lot for this level of risk," Young said, referring to U.S. stocks. "It's not a great entry point for a lot of different reasons."

What does this mean for the market?

While a low ERP might be good news for bonds, it could also mean that investors willing to wait out the tumult might walk away with a good deal. That's because historically, a low ERP is correlated with recessions and bear markets, according to former New York Fed economist Fernando Duarte, who wrote about the ERP in a 2015 paper and in a New York Fed blog post from December 2020

Although the U.S. economy isn't in a recession as U.S. GDP growth remains robust, the S&P 500 did enter bear-market territory last year. The large-cap index is still down roughly 17% from 4,796.56, its record high, reached Jan. 3, 2022, according to FactSet.

Meanwhile, investors looking to outperform the broader market will need to be more discerning when deciding which stocks to buy. Young and others expect firms with resilient business models, low debt and the ability to continue generating cash even when the economy shudders to prevail.

"Knowing how certain companies make their profits, and how resilient those profits or cash flows are, will be key," said Callie Cox,U.S. investment analyst at eToro, during a phone interview with MarketWatch.

Steve Eisman, the former hedge fund portfolio manager who shot to fame thanks to "The Big Short," said Monday that he's buying bonds "for the first time in a long time." Even as tech stocks have led a market rebound since the start of the year, Eisman believes the days of banking market-beating returns by investing in tech stocks are over.

U.S. stocks bounced after suffering their biggest weekly drop of the year on Friday. The S&P 500 closed 0.3% higher on Monday after finishing the week down 2.7% on Friday, according to FactSet data. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 72.17 points, or 0.2%.

Treasury yields, meanwhile, pulled back slightly, but the 10-year yield is still on the cusp of crossing above 4% for the fist time since last fall. It pulled back to 3.921% Monday, down 2.7 basis points on the day.

https://www.morningstar.com/news/marketwatch/20230228123/buying-stocks-is-just-not-worth-the-risk-today-these-analysts-say-they-have-a-better-way-for-you-to-get-returns-as-high-as-5

Supreme Court 'likely to strike down' Biden's plan for student-loan forgiveness

 'There's a widespread belief that this is a slam-dunk case for the conservative Supreme Court to rule against the Biden administration'

As the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to rule on President Joe Biden's plan to cancel a big tranche of federal student loans, analysts say it's likely the high court will nix it.

"Most of our contacts say that the probability of the student loan plan surviving the courts is no better than 1 in 3," said BTIG analysts Isaac Boltansky and Isabel Bandoroff in a recent note.

The high court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, has "taken steps to steadily curtail the administrative state," the BTIG team added.

An analyst for Capital Alpha Partners, Ian Katz, said in a note that "there's a widespread belief that this is a slam-dunk case for the conservative Supreme Court to rule against the Biden administration."

But Katz isn't quite as bearish as that consensus view, telling MarketWatch on Monday that he puts the chances for a Biden defeat at only 60%.

The first question the Supreme Court justices will look to answer is whether the parties opposing Biden's forgiveness plan have standing, or the right to bring a lawsuit, notes MarketWatch's Jillian Berman.

If the court finds the plaintiffs have the right to sue, then it will consider the merits of the case, or whether the law gives the Biden administration the power to cancel student debt.

"The main doubts for the plaintiffs, I think, is the possibility that the court could decide that the plaintiffs don't have standing," said Capital Alpha's Katz.

Biden made his long-awaited announcement on federal student loans in August, saying his administration plans to cancel $10,000 in debt per borrower for individuals making under $125,000 a year or households making less than $250,000.

With November's midterm elections nearing, he also announced forgiveness of up to $20,000 per borrower for Pell grant recipients.

The court likely won't issue its decision until June, but the nine justices could reveal their leanings when attorneys present their oral arguments on Tuesday.

https://www.morningstar.com/news/marketwatch/20230228144/supreme-court-likely-to-strike-down-bidens-plan-for-student-loan-forgiveness-analysts-say