muscleman

Clearly when he said "states like NY" here, he meant NYC! Oops: It did not reach the 20k level that I predicted in late July but the overall direction is going well. I already apologized in a prior post for missing the 20k mark. Also look at GA and FL and tell me why things are bad. I was wrong to say the entire US will have herd immunity by the end of August. After a closer look, I think WA and CA still need 100% more infections to get to herd immunity because they locked down too soon. I did not have time to look at every single state in the US so I only listed a few states here. But GA, FL has been reopen for a while and the trend continues down so that should be proof that herd immunity is there. Note that herd immunity doesn't mean 0 more cases. It just means the daily new cases number is under control because the virus is hard to spread.

There are many data points that I track that shows this is a bubble market. I am not going to lay out all of them but the TSLA and AAPL charts are two of them to look at. I try to be long term holders but I am flexible on what happened and adjusting my views. If the market goes up on a reasonable pace, it can last for two years and I'll try to hold for two years. I won't know that when I start a position, but after it runs for a while, and it looks crazy, I get scared and close my positions. "stimulus talks still not concluded, and a possible greater reopening in certain areas" That's true but everybody knows that and already bid up price because of that, so they are not real catalysts anymore. There is a saying that the market never discounts the same news twice. I am not optimistic about the market right now and I am ok to be punished by the market. But things could change.

Ok...So I guess "the crash" will be in 6 mo then... You also said schools will open in most states by September which is possible but depends too much on local politicians. I think new case numbers will improve from here on out (have likely peaked nationwide), but "dramatically improved" is questionable. Furthermore, hospitalizations and deaths will have a longer tail due to inherent delays. I definitely do not think there is enough data to suggest we are close to herd immunity as you've suggested. But none of this really matters economically as the damage is done particularly to the U.S. due to a much longer drawn out and larger in magnitude pandemic than most industrialized countries (second round of fiscal stimulus in progress...). Those second and third order (largely economic) effects of the pandemic will have a long tail... Let's put it this way, if the US daily new cases do not drop to 20k or below by the end of August, I'll apologize in this thread. How about that? Moving goal posts? We had 49,600 positive cases yesterday and 1105 death. By mid September, we are on track to be worse than Italy in terms of normalized death rate (death/ 1M population). 49,600 is much more than 20,000 objectively. Just look at this graph and tell me why it is not a significant improvement from the end of July. Yes. I missed the 20k mark. And I apologize for the wrong prediction on that. But the overall down trend is pretty solid.

Now revisiting this at the end of August, the daily new cases are way down. As I said in late July here, I think herd immunity is there in certain states such as NY, NJ, GA, TX, FL. Especially GA which reopened school and no one seems to be wearing masks in school and the trend is still down. But governors of NY and NJ will probably keep the lock down through election so they can justify mail in ballots without id verifications. We all know what this is all about. ::) @Dalal Holdings I sold most of my stocks this week and holding cash right now. I think the COVID cases are dropping faster than I expected so FED support for the market may dwindle quickly. And the asset bubble is brewing faster than I thought. TSLA, AAPL for example. Timing wise, no one knows the exact date of the top.

Sweden remained open throughout this crisis. The most likely explanation is herd immunity. This is why I have the hypothesis that same has been achieved in some US states and should reopen now. And we have the media yelling failed herd immunity there just like we have folks saying herd immunity is far from being achieved here.

I'm definitely one of "those". Could you please explain? I couldn't find anything googling "Bei-Dai-River meeting". By the way, thanks for starting this thread Undervalued! I wouldn't be surprised if it ends up being dozens of pages long as I think the US/China relationship (not just tech) will be one of the major questions to untangle if we want to be successful investors during the next decade. It is one of the most secretive meetings so I've only seen rumors coming out of that meeting so far. In China, the most important meetings are usually kept secret from public. This meeting invites former Chinese presidents and Premiers to comment on how the current president is doing. I think there are a lot of things that are unsatisfactory right now, and the rumor is that after discussion, they decided to adopt a new policy called "soft on 3 matters and tough on 3 other matters". They'll be soft with US and all other foreign affairs, and be tough with internal matters like Hong Kong. I think this rumor has validity because the Chinese foreign affairs speakers suddenly changed the tone and now they kept saying that US and China relation is very important and they need to collaborate etc. The other sign of change is that after the US sanctioned the 11 politicians in Hong Kong, China ordered 3 Chinese banks to collaborate with US to sanction these 11 politicians. That's a big irony. I feel sad for these 11 politicians because they sold their sole working for the CCP and now they are abandoned "for the greater good".

Those who think there is another round of retaliation simply do not understand Chinese politics. The recent Bei-Dai-River meeting has dramatically changed the landscape and China now decided to be soft with US and hard with HongKong.

I agree with you on here immunity. I think GA’s school reopening will be key to watch. If it continues to trend down in the end of August, that reenforces the hypothesis about herd immunity.

Has anyone seen this? https://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/there-pandemic It seems to be in contradictory of some of the charts that Dalal Holdings posted. Not saying he is wrong or he is right. I need to spend some more time digging into this. If anyone looked into the above and know if there is anything wrong please let me know.

Either countries like Sweden get to herd immunity or countries like Korea and China and NZ that enforced tight control and later get 2nd, 3rd, 4th waves.

Not sure which state you are in. But in WA, there is a legal requirement that employers have to give 3 paid hours on the election day, which should be fair.

Liberty's post triggers me to ask a question: Doesn't a digital public ID exist for US citizens? it doesn’t because requesting a public ID is discrimination. Can’t the government pay for the cost of the ID and then make the law that Id is required for voting?

Sweden vs rest of the world = Student A who studies one hour per day getting a B in the final exam and student B who studies 14 hours per day getting a B+ Joking aside...... Sweden's chart shows that herd immunity is likely achieved. Part of the reason I think NY, NJ, FL, TX, GA have achieved herd immunity as well. GA's school reopening is the key test bed and if the new daily charts continue to trend down by the end of August, that validates my thesis. Of course the Trump haters will not agree and want this to drag down the economy as much as possible. NY and NJ will face tremendous pressure to reopen.

I own a vacation home that I rent out most of the time. I've owned it almost exactly a year. I used it about 4 weeks in the last year and rented it out 194 days of the last 12 months. It has paid for the mortgage, taxes, insurance and all bills + about $15K extra. The bad news is that I put $100k down on it and spent about $40k on one time improvements. But the house is pretty much the way we want it now and almost everything has been fixed, redone, or replaced, so unless something breaks the one time costs should be very little per year going forward. Also we have started to increase our prices and have not had a hard time getting bookings, so we should be able to push that $15K extra up to $20k or more. Some thoughts about doing this is that you need a good local person you can trust. We found someone before we even bought the house. She owns a cleaning business and lives 5min from the house. She cleans in-between guests, does the linens, takes care of the lawn/landscaping, takes the trash to the transfer station, fills propane tanks when they need it, shovels snow in the winter, and will go to check on the house or help guests with anything that comes up. I don't know how we would manage it without her or someone like her. I would be constantly driving there to take care of things. Also, make sure the house is in good condition or you realistically assess what it will cost you to put it in good condition. I said above that we put $40k in improvements and that was with us doing 90% of the work ourselves. If we couldn't have stayed there and worked on it ourselves that would have been twice the costs. Our plan is to pay off the mortgage in under 8-10 years by putting excess money from airbnb rentals into the principle. Then when we are older it will produce income or maybe someday when I retire we will sell our main house and live there. We love the area, it has a great beach and it is on the prettiest part of Lake Winnipesaukee. Good luck with your search. And BTW if you are ever looking to stay on Lake Winnipesaukee: http://airbnb.com/h/TheBungalowAtSmithPoint Thank you! This is really interesting story! Would you say this investment is essential the equivalent of buying a residential REIT at book value? If you can make the choice again, would you buy this property or would you buy some residential REIT stocks? I see some residential REITs trading way above book and some trading way below book. But I understand that the book value can go down as depreciation though the actual property value goes up. I don't have trusted persons outside of Seattle. I wonder if buying beach condos make more sense in my case? The HOA will take care of most issues and I just need to find a cleaner who can do interior work.

Do you guys know if buying a vacation home in San Diego may work out better than FL? I am concerned with FL's hurricane problems. Does anyone own a vacation home that you use airbnb to rent it out during times that you don't live there?

I don't think the Chinese vaccine will be provided to the US, with such a high tension at the moment. China has been aggressively asking countries buying its medical supplies to praise the Chinese Communist Party, which pissed off a lot of countries. I heard a story that in Germany, there was a deal that every time a flight full of masks land, the city mayor has to organize a welcome party and praise the Chinese Community Party in the air port. Otherwise the masks will not be unloaded. I don't think that works with Trump. :)

My friend in Wuhan said this vaccine is already being widely used without phase 3 data. It’s phase 2 data is really good though. Same thing happening in Russia.

You can read the prior posts about T cell immunity that already exist in 40-60% of population, so 20% infection of COVID should get us to herd immunity. But let's just say this: If GA reopens schools and no one seems to be wearing masks in the schools, and if the new daily cases continues to drop into the end of August, is that proof that daily cases of 4-5k per 10M population for a month is sufficient to get us to herd immunity? NY, NJ, FL, TX, GA all have reached this ratio. CA and WA are still way off. Another data point supporting this view is that Iran recently said they probably have 24M people infected. They have 100M people in total. If 24M people are infected, it only takes 1-2 weeks before reaching all 100M people, but it seems to have stopped there.

How right you are! 10,000 or so (I just eyeballed it) people died from COVID in Az & Tx over the past few weeks. Morgue capacity is probably more necessary at this point. Indeed. Worse than NY for all them dumb red states didnt exactly play out. In fact, FL, GA, AZ, and TX have less deaths combined, than just NY. The relevant question right now for NY/NJ and those states....if you won't allow businesses to open in counties seeing less than 100 cases PER WEEK, well, when will they be able to open? And if you are forcing them shut(yea imagine that? A filthy rich Goldman banker putting mom and pop shops out of biz in order to bolster his political ambitions?) why do you continue to charge them property taxes? And at the "corporate rate" at that? Disgusting. It is pretty obvious at this moment what's going on with these blue states. They wanted to choke the economy as badly as possible so these businesses go bankrupt and then they can blame Trump for the poor management of the virus. Back in May, it was these blue states that had more violent protests than anyone, as if the virus does not exist. Then the 2nd wave came and it is all Trump's fault. Oh, by the way, the 2nd wave is all caused by Trump's stupid decision to reopen business, with people wearing masks, and 6 ft social distancing, it must have caused more spread than the protests where people had no masks and no social distancing. People are blaming FL, TX, GA for being stupid to reopen and now having a lot of cases. I think there is a high probability that in 20 days they'll see dramatic drop in cases even with GA's school reopening because herd immunity has been achieved. Then residents in NJ and NY will be pissed that they still cannot reopen.

it's all kind of particularly funny for me, because I've always been the "don't buy a house, buy stocks" guy amongst my friends/acquaintances, but then Federal Realty Trust tried to raise my rent from $3,100 -->$3,500 and the personal circumstances allowed for a house purchase and I begrudgingly bought in a bidding war and that's done much better than any other pre-covid investment. Anyways, I thought America (and to a much greater extent Canada, Australia, certain parts of Europe) were WAY too crazy about housing and I feel like covid has put steroids into that mentality, not to mention record low rates. there's massive unemployment, but for the well-off/employed, I feel like SFH is going to be ridiculously well bid. Obviously that's already playing out, but what I mean is that covid is going to reinforce the american (and world) psyche of being obsessed with allocating too much $ to their houses. I bought my house for a 2% cap rate, so it's a double with only 100 bps of cap rate compression ;D Charlie Munger: "We made most of our money waiting" Jesse Livermore: "It is my sitting tight that made me the most money" Real estate investments tend to work out better than stocks because it is so hard to buy and sell. You can't just wake up one day with a bad mood and log onto your app and close the position in seconds. It forces people to sit tight.

I never said you can’t know 2nd or 3rd order effects, it’s when there’s wide uncertainty that you ought to be conservative, that is all. And yes, it’s much easier to say the economic damage had been done when GDP change and unemployment are where they are and congress/fed are intervening to the extent they are...the damage is done. And you’re the one confident about a market crash, I have no idea where the market goes. In fact, it may go much higher esp if Trump is reelected (just don’t ask about USD or real returns). Geeze...... I don't know what else to say man..... Do you actually understand what I said above? "In the early stage of an asset bubble, you want to get in aggressively." ::)

Where is the data to support your argument that there were way above normal deaths in NY during that period? I can't find any data so I would be curious to see it. Since you seem to be making some strong claims, if you or someone else could bring me an updated chart of the one below, I'd really appreciate it. Of course I never said I'll be right and you are wrong. We are all here to figure this puzzle out. See Dalal’s chart above. Official sources are here https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm Yeah. I did see that. I deleted my post because I was posting a stale chart. Thank you! I do see the excess death now.

And my last post to Dalal Holdings, investing is all about making educated guesses. You can keep posting past data and making vague arguments like "Oh the damage is already done" or "I don't think anyone can do 2nd or 3rd degree thinking.". It is true that 2nd degree thinking is hard, but that's where you make the money. 1st degree thinking never works in investing. Not sure when you started investing but I had almost the same feeling about it as you do for COVID now during the 2011 EU crisis. I later realized that I was totally wrong because the market looks forward 6-12 months ahead and you have to make an educated guess about that. I also recommend you to read George Soros' Alchemy of Finance. It was extremely hard to understand and I read it 4-5 times and all of his other books over the years to finally have some level of understanding. In the early stage of an asset bubble, you want to get in aggressively. Definitely not in the late stage of an asset bubble. I am not going to post anymore until the end of this month. Good luck!

I have been told this by 2 doctors directly. One of them actually mentioned a figure, like $35,000 per patient. So some death certificates are being mismarked in NY while reality is “normal”? Total deaths are also above normal. Is the state shooting those people and marking them as COVID deaths? If they are not shooting them, and everything is normal, then there are death certificates for people who are not actually dead? So these “undead” people are roaming the streets of New York, in apartments, houses, nursing homes etc? If the undead are everywhere now, is this the zombie apocalypse? Truly an alternative world. No one says COVID is normal. But you are intentionally twisting other people's words. No one ever said alive people were issued death certificates. What I am saying is that people died from obvious other causes and the state classified all these death as COVID death, inflation the total COVID death and trying to get more federal funding. But on the other hand, the media is accusing Trump for covering up the actual death count, which implies that the actual COVID death number is higher. Anyway, I am tired of posting here, as people are intentionally putting their words into my month, for whatever reason. I'll just keep quiet until the end of this month and see if the COVID daily new cases is sharply lower.

I think the war risk is close to zero now. I heard a shocking news today that in June, some Chinese soldiers died inside armored vehicles after the Indian soldiers poked through the armor by spear and knife. It smells like big corruption in the Chinese army and their suppliers.