LC

So let me get this straight. You're upset people aren't leaning on past history to predict the future course of COVID. But when people point to the 2nd wave as an outlying historical event (respiratory illnesses historically recede in warm months, contrary to COVID), I guess that is not the "history" of your choosing. Ok, fine. So when I then ask you to instead make a definitive claim about the future course of COVID, both you and muscleman beat around the bush and refuse to do so. You're trying to have it both ways, hence the frustration.

I didn't realize you could see the future! With such a gift, can you confirm if there will be a "third wave" as we emerge flu season, or if COVID has run its course? Please, be definitive.

Rest in peace:

Oh, this is ironic.

So here we are at the start of October, it may be useful to revisit our good ole' excess mortality data. Europe: https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps USA: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm Looks like most of Europe has stabilized, with the exception of Spain. USA looks like it has fully passed the second wave and mortality has normalized. So the big question is whether there will be a third wave or whether COVID-19 has run its course...

Sold out of SSD yesterday (wow timing), TFSL today. Sold some NET, AKAM, and a little XOM.

A lot of things happened before 2017 as well. Find the evidence to support your claim, as I mentioned, I have looked but could not.

The vast, vast majority of those leaving CA earn <$50k and do not have a bachelors degree. There is some immigration into CA, these are earning $50k+ and have at least a bachelors. https://next10.org/sites/default/files/california-migration.pdf This above study is only thru 2016 so perhaps there has been a stark change in the past 3-4 years, but I couldn't find a breakdown with demographics (but these are structural forces - immigrants entering and leaving - so I doubt much has changed).

Yes I agree it is very interesting to view results over time in the context of how the country has evolved (they have published the report for 30 years as of now) It would be interesting to overlay these health indicators with COVID-responses from state officials.

Perhaps you both are right - it might help these red states "fail upwards"... I mean, Texas and Florida will need more productive citizens if they ever hope to match NY & CA's national GDP contribution of 22%, up from the relatively paltry 14% that they currently contribute. Further, perhaps states which care for their citizens' health may be a factor in the above GDP contribution. What's the old saying, "Health is wealth" ? UNH State health ranking: https://assets.americashealthrankings.org/app/uploads/ahr_2019annualreport.pdf New york: 11th Cali: 12th Florida: 33rd Texas: 34th

https://www.wsj.com/articles/inflation-is-already-herefor-the-stuff-you-actually-want-to-buy-11601112630 If it feels like the price of everything you buy has been soaring, that’s because it has—even as central bankers everywhere worry about the danger of deflation. The gap between everyday experience and the yearly inflation rate of 1.3% in August is massive. The price of the stuff we’re buying is rising much faster, while the stuff we’re no longer buying has been falling, but still counts for the figures. Economists will be relieved that the laws of supply and demand are still working, at a time when so much in the discipline is in doubt. But for investors it hangs a veil over the outlook for perhaps the single most important issue for the markets: whether we’re headed for a future of inflation, deflation or a continuation of the past decade’s lackluster price rises.

Originally uncovered, of course, in a whitepaper entitled: "Efficient methods for optimal dust extraction and collection"

I think in the long term equities will outperform RE, but you’ve gotta live somewhere...to be fair my wife has a knack for real estate markets so this is partly her doing.

About a week ago I sold a whole bunch of stuff, essentially as bridge financing on a home purchase. So now I am sitting at around 45% cash at least for the next month. This is the second time I have sold a significant portion of equity investments to fund real estate purchases, before what seems to be a market pullback. I will have to update my forum signature and update the board when I plan on any future RE purchases :)

There is no strong evidence when predicting the future of COVID. We have mixed evidence: a virus with some flu-like characteristics (which may gain viral strength during traditional flu season) ; a "second-wave" which hit the US in June-Aug ; a lack of a "second wave" in most of Europe ; vaccine progress which to date seems mixed (historically vaccines require aprox 18 months to develop, if at all possible) When presented with conflicting evidence, usually the responsible decision is to "play it safe". At least that is my perspective, yours may differ.

There is speculation (see the prior 2 posts I have made in this thread) that there is a mutated strain of SARS-CoV-2 which is less deadly than the initial strain in Mar/Apr.

Additionally, two studies show the furin cleavage site may not be as important as Yan’s work implies: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41392-020-0184-0 https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fgene.2020.00783/full Since all the mutations were identified from live viral strains in COVID-19 patients, our results revealed that the furin cleavage site may not be required for SARS-CoV-2 to enter human cells in vivo, which agrees with the in vitro experimental results showing that SARS-CoV-2, with deletion of the furin cleavage site, could still enter the cell lines of humans, African green monkeys, and bay hamsters (Walls et al., 2020). Therefore, we speculate that our observed mutants may represent a new subgroup of SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus with reduced tropism and transmissibility, which requires further experimental validations. Analyzing clinical symptoms and infectiousness of the COVID-19 patients with those mutant strains may be also important in future studies. If tropism and transmissibility of those mutant strains were indeed reduced, they might serve as potential live-attenuated vaccine candidates

Her claim is as follows: SARS-COV-2 has a "furin cleavage site" (I am getting far out of my depth here) which the closest previous coronavirus (SARS-COV) did not have. Here is a decent explanation: https://www.virology.ws/2020/02/13/furin-cleavage-site-in-the-sars-cov-2-coronavirus-glycoprotein/ This is the relevant portion: Examination of the protein sequence of the S glycoprotein of SARS-CoV-2 reveals the presence of a furin cleavage sequence (PRRARS|V). The CoV with the highest nucleotide sequence homology, isolated from a bat in Yunnan in 2013 (RaTG-13), does not have the furin cleavage sequence. Because furin proteases are abundant in the respiratory tract, it is possible that SARS-CoV-2 S glycoprotein is cleaved upon exit from epithelial cells and consequently can efficiently infect other cells. In contrast, the highly related bat CoV RaTG-13 does not have the furin cleavage site. Whether or not the furin cleavage site within the S glycoprotein of SARS-CoV-2 is actually cleaved remains to be determined. Meanwhile, it is possible that the insertion of a furin cleavage site allowed a bat CoV to gain the ability to infect humans. The furin cleavage site might have been acquired by recombination with another virus possessing that site. This event could have happened thousands of years ago, or weeks ago. Upon introduction into a human – likely in an outdoor meat market – the virus began its epidemic spread. Dr. Yan asserts that this cleavage site was introduced into a lab (see her report, pg. 13) as there are no known other coronaviruses which contain both (1) this cleavage site and (2) a similar-enough sequence identity. She claims the closest coronavirus with this furin site has no more than 40% similar sequencing, referencing a whitepaper ("Furin, a potential therapeutic target for COVID-19", preprinted on chinaXiv). I could not access this whitepaper. The article I reference above suggests this furin site could have been acquired in some other (i.e. naturally-occurring) manner. I simply don't have the expertise to discern between the two, perhaps another forum member can pick it up from here. Here are some references which may be useful: https://jvi.asm.org/content/84/7/3134 https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/71/15/884/5781085 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0966842X16000718 https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/27/eabb9153

On this, I don't disagree.

Not probably, definitively: http://www.healthdata.org/sites/default/files/files/Projects/COVID/briefing_US_09.03.2020_Page_10.png

Trump does not have the nation's interest at heart. Any actions to that end are purely coincidental. If he was truly concerned with preventing national hysteria, he would have made efforts to meet BLM protesters in the middle, rather than stoke that fire. His actions to protect national interests are inconsistent, because that is not his goal. His actions to protect Trump interests are absolutely consistent, because that is his goal.

Lol. Deflect, Deflect, Deflect. I'm just here to enjoy the mental gymnasts at work--surely politicizing masks, downplaying the threat, and holding indoor gatherings in no way affected R0 in the U.S.A.! There are no levers that Trump pulled the wrong way, surely! Oh, I don't doubt that Trump pulled every lever that he had as badly as it could possibly be pulled. Don't get me wrong about that. But, his levers were far from the most influential. It's funny that the right wing rails about how some of the northern state governors are dragging their feet on re-opening, while the left wing rails about the neglect of the southern state governors in implementing control measures in their state, and then the incurably partisan participants blame the whole works on the president, despite an obvious difference in the outcomes between the two groups of states. SJ Two things. Reducing or eliminating testing is just plain dumb. No two ways about that. Trump could have influenced millions to alter their behavior but he deliberately chose not to.

And why not? Answering that question is a big part of this thread's topic. MSFT, AMZN is not a "value" company? It's like the one true scotsman. These two companies have created some of the most value, globally, in the last decade. If anything, they are two of the most "valu"-able companies to ever exist!

To double click on the idea of "adjust to the world around you" and metric of value, I've been thinking of this idea that in tech with proven earnings a P/E of 30 might be the equivalent of P/E of 10 in traditional industries. Reason: In proven tech companies with earnings, the total addressable market (TAM) is unknown because they open new markets. This does not happen with traditional commodities & industries - ie a pulp producer is unlike to evolve to clothing apparel retailer. With tech, a computer company (like Aapl) can become a music company and then a services company and then may become a health company. So if Aapl, Goog, FB are ever trading at a PE of <30, could be the equivalent of traditionally buying at PE of 10. Does that make some sense?? I think of it similarly, not in terms of TAM but longevity. MSFT for example I think has good odds of being around for the next 10-20 years, with reinvestment opportunity. Long time horizon plus reinvestment opportunity is a winning formula. Unknown time horizon (short) plus lack of reinvestment opportunity is the opposite. I’ll also play in the middle, the broadband providers I think have a long runway but not the best reinvestment opportunities. So here the initial investment price is a determining factor of final returns.

The big question with Sears was, "who the hell wants these crap properties? And they were mostly crap. So who is going to pay 100% on the dollar for them? Are you?? In terms of value investing in general; of course it works - but you need to adjust to the world around you at some point, and stop waiting for the world to adjust to you (it's a balance). Low interest rates have made things difficult - we have boosted terminal values at the expense of near-term cash flows. Much harder to estimate at time zero. If your definition of value investing is buying under 5x ebitda or 10x PE or 1x book, well unfortunately you are fishing in a cesspool of mediocrity. So I definitely agree it is harder. Life is easy when you only need to estimate a few years of cash flows to earn your keep. With rates so low, now you have to estimate out 7, 10, or more years. This is a much more difficult task!