tng
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Posts posted by tng
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The business model of a brokerage is inherently safer too, as it is mainly a fee driven business. They won't fall into the trap of reaching for yield. I think it's pretty safe for high networth individuals or companies because the broker mainly acts as a custodian and the assets are not comingled with the broker's funds (or shouldn't be, that's what all the audits and federal regulations are suppose to ensure). Technically it is possible for there to be widespread fraud or malfeasance and a lot of client assets are lost, but that's basically impossible at a major brokerage that has many layers of checks and security.
Roku keeping so much money at a bank account that probably yields 0% is insane, especially given that you can find good short term yields right now. No idea what the CFO and all the finance people there are doing. I know SIVB offered a lot of perks to leave large sums of money in their bank accounts, such as cheaper rates on loans and credit facilities, etc. It was very favorable for small businesses with a few million dollars. But with hundreds of millions of dollars like Roku, it seems insane.
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“Playing it safe” should be reserved for situations where the outcome is more binary. A we’ve seen so far, lockdowns affect far more than just the spread of the virus. I mean, wasn’t the objective to “flatten the curve” as to not overwhelm hospital systems?
I feel like I am in a split world where one half of the people think we should lockdown forever (to "play it safe") and the other half has been working for the past 6 months and being fully exposed to the virus, so they have gotten over it already. For the white collar office worker that can work from home indefinitely, nothing will make it safe enough. Say we have a vaccine that is 75% effective (which is probably too optimistic). If the current probability of death is too high, is cutting it down by 75% low enough for them to go rushing back onto the subways and going back to the office? Probably not. Is some not very healthy middle aged person with 1% of death going to come out at 0.25% of death?
Meanwhile, on the other side, you have someone who has been working at Walmarts, supermarkets, delivery, supply chain, etc that have been working through the pandemic and they are sick of the lockdowns trashing the economy and their kids' futures. Many of them have already been infected (in big cities, probably the majority of them). They've already taken the risk and all the benefits of the lockdown all go to this protected class of white collar workers. Some people seem to be trapped into this indentured servant role where they prefer not to work at a Walmart, but they can't quit (no unemployment for voluntarily quitting), they can't change jobs because everything is closed, and they make less money working than someone sitting at home collecting enhanced unemployment, so obviously they are screaming about how the lockdowns are a violation of human rights, because they feel like they are in a slave class.
I'm not really sure how we get out of this. The virus is not catastrophic, which is why most places are partially reopen. But it's also not completely safe. Maybe people didn't respect the flu before, but even if we get COVID down to the same level as the flu (i.e. we have a COVID vaccine that is about as effective as the flus), is that good enough for all the WFH crowd to come back out? If something that is 3x the flu is too dangerous, is the flu itself too dangerous to come back out? And at what point is it too unfair to the people that have been working through the pandemic that they revolt?
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It's also not clear if low Vitamin D is just a marker some other deficiency. Supplementing with vitamin D may be different than being able to naturally have high vitamin D. It's probably a good idea to supplement with Vitamin D if you are low because it's well studied and safe, but it might not be the miracle supplement if you are doing other things wrong.
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Comparing present U.S., European, and Asian numbers have a lot of flaws. The U.S. got the virus later than Europe, who got it later than Asia. And in the beginning, nobody was counting COVID cases/deaths because they didn't know COVID was a thing and they didn't have testing ability/capacity. Who knows how much it spread before they started counting. If the COVID deaths curve goes way up (meaning it is extremely widespread within the population) and then flatlines, the region probably has herd immunity. You can't remove the virus from the population when it is that extremely widespread. Too much noise in the data and people focus too much on where the theoretical threshold for herd immunity is. You know it when you see it, and that is when the deaths go away.
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Surprised by the JPM sale. Maybe it's tax harvesting? We know he's been adding to BAC recently, but I always thought that most of the big banks these days are very similar, with WFC being the exception because of all their legal issues.
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I think play accounts will just psychologically mess with you. Most people will take more risk than they should because it's not real money. And if they are lucky, they will lose all their fake money and learn a lesson out of it. If they are not, they will win a lot of fake money and then become overconfident with their real money.
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Easy to say, but how do you increase circulation in your house? You can open up windows and negate your air conditioning? This is also missing the fact that one spends a lot of time in the house (10h+) no matter what , if you count sleeping?
How do you get infected in your own home to begin with? When another family member is infected, then the rest of the household is screwed in most cases anyways and cross infection is almost inevitable, unless you follow A strict regime where the infected member is quarantined one room in and everyone wears masks in the house upon contact. Then there are still issues with bathrooms and kitchen as common areas.
Now if you host parties with extended family members (who typically don’t live in your house) or friends then that’s a huge risk and they often has been found the root cause of infection clusters . But those things happen during all seasons, but when weather is nice it could be done outsides, reducing the risk somewhat. the better option would be not to host such events and keep them to same household members.
With household infection, there probably isn't much you can do (you are probably infected by the time you realize that someone is sick). But in terms of office space or retail space, if "circulating air" is what is important, then air filters should also do a decent job because the good ones are rated to filter out particles as small as viruses.
I have a theory that stuff like dust (which is all over the place indoors) could be a potential transmission vector as people are breathing it into their nose and breathing it back out and dust or pollen can fly around the air because they are "fluffy" and have large surface area and low density. This could be one of the reasons why masks seems to work in reducing infections even though they are ineffective at filtering out virus-sized particles in a laboratory. Virus infections could actually come from the virus riding on larger particles that we breathe deep into our lungs and breathe back out. Outdoors, the dust is dissipated pretty quickly so we don't keep re-breathing the same particles.
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Don’t know a lot about Howard Hughes but watching Aviator, there are some striking similarities. Those who are invested in Tesla worried about key person risks at all?
He doesn’t seem the most stable of CEOs, but then again, it’s probably because he does not care about social conventions.
Just wanted to know if I was the only one who thinks this :S
I think anybody investing in Tesla should be 100% concerned about how big of a role Elon Musk plays in it. He has a cult-like following and that contributed greatly to his ability to raise capital for the company. There were a few times where Tesla seemed to be at the brink. I think some percentage of his employees buy into him and they might not follow another person. Tesla wouldn't have worked without a person like Musk, but Tesla investors are also at the mercy of his weird quirks and impulses.
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And I don't understand why some people would like to consider discovering a vaccine as a "black swan" event that could happen in the short term. All the EXPERTS agree that it will take about 18 months. Shouldn't we take their words?
I have a feeling that this vaccine will be a lot more tricky than people think, because of how this affects different groups of people. For people under 20, it basically doesn't affect them. It affects very few people from ages 20-30. Then starts ramping up as people get older. So if we do come up with a vaccine, are we really going to inject it into all the kids and risk the unknown long term side effects? Most kids would probably prefer getting the actual virus than rolling the dice on an unknown drug. Would you inject it into your toddler? If COVID-19 is as deadly as Ebola, people would be lining up to take an experimental vaccine because that gives better odds for survival. But since it affects certain groups more than others, people in the safer groups are not going to want to take the mystery vaccine or it simply won't be approved for that reason.
There are something like 100 vaccines in trials already. One or more of them will likely be the vaccine that we will use in 2 years. But we are not going to accelerate the studies because this virus isn't deadly enough to risk potential unknown side effects. The more realistic black swan on the positive side is a treatment that decreases death rate and speeds up recovery time.
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who needs to extrapolate to the rest of the country, for goodness sakes!!! apples to apples. NYC is the epicenter of the crisis, and because major media is NYC-centric, the mass hysteria was exported. why does the governor of michigan go stalinesque? because she wants to look like she is on top of things like cuomo. so of course this doesnt have to be extrapolated nationwide, because NYC's experience isn't the nation's experience. this 20% antibody positive rate makes covid less deadly than the flu. and if this result doesnt comport with how you want to think, then just call it a bad test. an inhale some more sand
At some point, science is going to prove common sense again and we will learn/confirm that the majority of New York's cases (and likely Boston's cases too) come from their reliance on their subway system. That is six million people in extremely tightly packed trains with poor ventilation every day (likely two trips a day, mostly during rush hours). I suspect that the subway system at New York combined with the international travel due to New York City being the premiere business hub in the world is actually the biggest vector of worldwide transmission and spread. How do we reopen New York City without an explosion of cases again due to everybody needing the subway system? That is a very hard question. Maybe New York will have to operate for a while without subways (it would be a pain for a lot of people). But sparse rural areas in the U.S. should not be waiting forever until New York figures that out.
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Are you confused about high sensitivity of key variables in the models and the reduced deaths due to the effectiveness of shelter in place? Choosing to ignore them? Aware of them and disagree with them?
What happens when shelter in place ends? Or are we just not going to end it until we discover a vaccine? A lot of the "open the economy" people are simply pessimists that think we are going to be forced into the herd immunity route whether we like to or not. It's not that they don't realize that staying in lock down prevents deaths right now, that's obvious, but a life isn't saved because someone is moved from one sinking boat onto another sinking boat.
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BTW - math on cost per life is very high for the US government.
My assumptions (just guesses)
Number of people would have died from Covid if just kept everything open: 1 million
Incremental cost to economy: $ 2 trillion
Cost per life: $2 million
I am not sure if the average age but it may be ~76-80
It is interesting because I am guessing the market value in a court settlement would be much less.
Also, the question is whether that $2 trillion is a one time cost or if it is a $2 trillion per month cost, because so far there is no obvious way to reopen without most people eventually getting the virus anyways. Are we going to pay $2 trillion a month until there is a vaccine?
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For those that feel strongly we should track and trace how would you go about that? I'm not arguing against it but the man power needed, the time for testing, and the tracking really would border on unfathomable.
How often do you test someone? If they have a fever at home? At work? Whats a fever? I have patients that tell me they "run low" and 99 degrees is a fever for them. Once a week for everyone in a hot spot or cluster? How do you coordinate a couple hundred thousand people that may have taken public transit, etc and find the time let alone the resources to actually see these people in a medical facility, test them, and then trace even outside of immediate family/workplace. You quickly could be over a million contacts in a week. Its mind boggling and virtually impossible.
I think in theory its great and those seeing patients/clients in any business would quickly understand the many power/time/facility/cost to event try to test 5000 people in a couple days let alone trace contacts ON TOP providing healthcare for the public once the States re opn. Who is going to do this?
As bad as it sounds practically speaking herd immunity/vaccine/cure is only option. I fear a testing/tracking program would fail miserably. Not because its not the right thing to do or best thing to do but I feel it would border on downright impossible in a country like the US.
I give the S. Koreans a lot credit if this was the true reason it worked. God damn.
Yeah, once you look at the false positive rate and false negative rate of existing tests, and then look at how many people use the subway system in New York and Boston, you have to become very skeptical that it will work. How many false positives are going to be in one train alone (let alone the dozens of trains during rush hour)? You'll end up tracing down the entirety of the city on false positives alone. And if you let a single false negative into a system that transports millions of people a day, you are fucked. The thing that sucks is that tests for this virus are not very accurate. That's why I think that the actual reason why South Korea isn't hit as hard are actually due to far more simpler reasons, such as face masks or low obesity rate.
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I was clear all along I am not a believer that Trump deserves much credit or blame for most of this. However others disagreed. Despite really refusing to give numbers, and declaring a disaster was a certainty, and that it was all Trumps fault, surely you'd think they'd be heaping praise on him now that the totals they were either projecting or implying were giant fairytales, no? Nah...Of course they dont. They just change the story. Again.
I think people are wishing it is Trump's fault because that means there actually is an obvious solution that will come out. I don't think anybody could have done much better or worse. I don't think anything could have been done at cities like New York that has large international travel and relies heavily on the subway system. The virus was likely seeded already before anybody knew about it and the large cities were screwed without draconian Wuhan style quarantines and nobody could have done that. The only obvious mistake I see is the absolute fiery conviction that western doctors had that civilians should not be masked.
Even now, I think there is a lot of blind faith that testing and contact tracing will work. I think it is actually getting more and more likely that we will be forced into the herd immunity route whether we like it or not.
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I think the phones will start ringing after the economy opens. Right now everybody is waiting for their bailout. Some businesses have stopped paying rent (and it is okay for now because nobody is going to kick them out and the real estate owners don't have anybody to put in either). When things open and the government can no longer write checks for everybody, it will become obvious who the survivors are and deals will need to be made. There will be a ton of businesses that are solid, but need to make back payments to continue operating.
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Not looking for an argument here just clarification of my thoughts and others who have consistently said I was wrong. Im not looking for a victory lap here or looking to be ridiculed. Im just looking for a little clarification of thoughts vs what I hypothesized on or about March 15th since you continue to allude to it, case in point your 1.
What exactly is wide spread to you? 50x suspected cases is not wide spread? Jesus Christ.
My framework of thought was on around March 11-15th there were hundreds of thousands if not millions of people that had the corona virus. I was not able to project a specific number and the observation was completely anectotal. I get that. I also never suggested herd immunity.
So now that this latest antibody test comes out and its projected 50-80k people in one county in California in early April may have had the virus is it really that big of a stretch to think 100s of thousands/millions had it across the US in Mid March? If it was 500-1000 people in the Standford study I would raise the white flag. If this study is to be taken even at face value the number infected was easily over a millon one month ago. Using that nationwide against confirmed studies we get 34 million in US infected that is too simple of a projection but gives a frame of refence. Even now is this not possible?
How much more evidence do we need? We have the German study....flawed bc area was hard hit so too high at 15%. Pregnant woman...flawed not random. Homeless study...flawed not random. Dutch study, people too young. Italian article on 60% of people had antibodies...area was hard hit, doesnt count. This study...flawed...they advertised on Facebook so people who may have had the virus more likely to participate even though we take our CFR from only the people we test who show up and are in a window to test positive via PCR.
I think many who have tracked this maybe pretty anchored on their theory and again that is up for debate. But so far we have 5 antibody studies all non perfect true. But all point to an infection rate way above what is confirmed and thus the CFR drops significantly as a result. Early in this pandemic looking even at the recent Gilead study these studies are not perfect but we are looking for any early data points we can get. But all the antibody studies as imperfect as each is points to way more spread then shown by confirmed tests and way lower CFR. Is there an antibody study that has shown just the opposite?
Many of the critics of this antibody studies immediately point to the sensitivity/specificity of the tests used to find this data suggesting they cannot not be relied on to say this is "like the flu". Yet many including RichardGibbons advocate for heavy testing and say this is a necessary metric and should be used extensively. If you dont use it you are dangerous, we must test!!. So which is it? ??? When the data fits we love em and when it doesn't we hate em?
I think certain areas almost have to be very widespread. It's hard to imagine that it isn't wide spread in a subway city like New York. One infected person going to and from work for a few days would have exposed several hundred people in an extremely tightly packed train with poor ventilation. Rush hour is basically like having a giant parade twice a day (and that has been blamed for widespread cases in some other areas). Also, if a Boston-area college has a dozen confirmed cases, can anybody believe that it wasn't widespread through the student body (but probably many asymptomatic because they are young)? Boston is also a subway city and there was that MIT study on the sewage of one Boston-area town that hints at it being extremely wide spread (apparently everybody is pooping out virus). California has some very dense areas, but most people drive, so the subway cities might have multiples more people infected. On the other hand, it is hard to imagine this being extremely widespread in the mid-west.
I do think there is too much blind faith in testing and contact tracing working. That will work in less densely populated areas (but so will anything else). However, even if we can instantly test people in New York or Boston, each train is going to have dozens of false positives. And then what? Quarantine everybody on the train (who are all clearly exposed) and all their families and co-workers? That very quickly becomes everybody. I just don't know how you can re-open a city that relies on public transit like New York City or Boston unless it is widespread there already.
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I think the weird thing about this market crash and recession is that it has the potential to destroy many businesses that people have always thought were safe. Berkshire Hathaway has a different risk profile than individual investors because the government is willing to write checks to those that have lost their jobs so they don't have to liquidate their assets at fire-sale prices while many businesses are racking up losses and debts that they might never be able to pay back. The market itself is not down too much in total, but there has been a huge reshuffling of valuations as some businesses will almost certainly die while others are huge beneficiaries (ex: everybody spending their government checks on Netflix because they can't go outside). I think Berkshire, because of all its operating businesses, needs to be more conservative while individual investors can afford to be more aggressive.
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We are going to feel like idiots if we find out that 80% of the deaths could have been prevented if everybody simply wore makeshift cloth masks. I honestly think that this can actually be the case.
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Thread on mask usage, including in the Czech republic:
Could help explain why Japan did so well..?
I understand that masks need to go to those on the frontlines first as long as there's limited supply, but as soon as supply ramps up, probably a good idea for everybody to have masks for a while. Cheap way to save lots of lives, including from the flu and other diseases, and ben R0 <1.
I strongly believe that masks are very critical. The Chinese doctors seem to recommend that people wear them too. All the Asians who wear masks post SARS are not crazy. I think the U.S. doctors are telling people that masks (anything less than N95) don't do anything because they don't want people buying up all the masks and leaving none for the healthcare workers, but I think this will backfire horribly because when our mask production goes up and we have the capability for supplying masks for everybody, people won't wear them because they will remember what was said originally.
People don't get sick because a single virus enters their body. It has to land in the right place (in this case, into an ACE receptor in the lungs) and successfully attach and reproduce. And there is no guarantee that the reproduced viruses will land onto another ACE receptor. They are not creatures with legs that can walk around looking for the right receptor. And RNA is fragile and can break down or mutate into something harmless pretty quickly. If getting sick is as simple as a single virus entering the body, we would be sick all the time because there are viruses all over the place. The right thing happening for the virus to win is like making a basketball shot from the stands, it has to be perfect. However, if you allow millions or billions of viruses in, then eventually the "lucky shot" happens (or in this case, "unlucky shot"). When you hit critical mass, at least some of the reproduced viruses will land into the right receptors and reproduce again.
So even if the masks only prevent 50% of the viruses from entering your body, it could make a big difference. It's the same reason why 6 ft is the accepted safe social distancing length. You will most likely still get some of the virus in the air if someone is breathing it out, but it's dissipated enough where it's unlikely to set off the perfect chain reaction to infect you. Masks don't make you invincible and you still should practice social distancing and proper hygiene. But even if it only reduces the probability of infection by a tiny amount, that is a huge number of total cases when you take compounding or exponential growth into effect.
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I went into a bubble tea shop yesterday in Massachusetts and all the workers had face masks and eye shields. They removed all the tables and chairs. People were asked to spread out while waiting for their order and leave afterwards because there will be no seating. Asian Americans and Asians (Japan, Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, etc) are just taking this a lot more seriously and they have probably heard about protocols used during SARS and in Wuhan. Most non-Asian Americans would die before they are caught wearing something so unfashionable. Yes, it isn't very effective for COVID-19, but most people don't know that. And it is effective for some other illnesses, especially if everybody wears them. Hopefully this changes going forward and maybe we can reduce flu deaths in the future.
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We've entered a world of social media induced panic. Pessimism sells and generates clicks and shares. People who don't react overly pessimistically will look like idiots if this ends up being pretty bad and they may face significant career risk (imagine being the guy who tells everybody to calm down and then a lot of people die next week). Everybody on the Internet will rail on you if you are wrong on the optimistic side. It's simply safer to be overly pessimistic. The WHO interpreted the data in the most pessimistic way possible with their 3.4% death rate estimate. They are assuming that the tested population (which heavily skews toward very old, sick people who show up at the hospitals) is representative of the general population. It's safer to be pessimistic. There is better job security to be pessimistic, and there is always that inherent bias in believing in the case that results in more funding/investing into your field or industry or the result that maximizes the importance of your field or industry.
Maybe this will be really bad and the excessive pessimism is warranted. But I don't think people have fully thought through what it means if the pessimism is unwarranted. Some people are calling for mass quarantines and shutting down all public transit systems (and for all we know, it's way too late for that anyways). A lot of people will lose their jobs and many small businesses will go bankrupt. Spending habits are already being modified. How do we measure the human cost to this? Nobody can quantify the damage / side effects (depression, suicide, alcoholism, etc) that will happen to those in industries or fields that would be decimated by extreme actions. From the point of view of those people, it doesn't seem worth it, especially if this ends up being more mild than expected. It's very easy for someone like me who can work from home to scream for draconian quarantines that maybe increases my probability of survival by 0.01% while definitely destroying the jobs and businesses that can't operate remotely. I don't envy the people who have to make these decisions.
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Exactly. Similar to Facebook. The more people using it the more valuable it is. The only question is if Bitcoin is the Facebook of cryptocurrencies or the MySpace?
I'm not sure if it is even comparable like this. If there is a huge advancement in social media, Facebook can simply change their core code to put that feature into it. Other smaller social networks did stuff like videos, live streaming, stories, etc first and Facebook adopted the ones that worked well. Facebook at launch was a wall that people can write on. Now it is very different.
The crypto-currencies are very limited in their ability to change like that. What if someone figures out something better than Bitcoin's block chain? It's almost certain to happen over time. When someone invents a vastly superior crypto-currency, is everybody going to stick with the old one?
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In the old days when regulation was looser, well connected people made money with insider trading. I think the U.S. just had a longer history of ultra wealthy families with deep political connections that created a culture of for hedge funds. If something like the 2/20 structure never existed, it would be extremely difficult to convince people to pay you that much today.
It's normal for very rich families to fund their friends and family. I get the sense that there are a lot of kids who get to play hedge fund manager with daddy's money because getting below average returns with a small slice of the family wealth isn't a big deal. Sometimes you have two wealthy groups buying favors from each other by funding their kid's funds. You have a few guys who are very good at it, but the vast majority of hedge funds won't perform well, but new ones keep springing up. You wonder "who are these idiots who keep putting money into hedge funds that have no track record?". It's not about the performance. Some rich people buy their kids very expensive cars to let them feel special. Others suffer a little under-performance on a pool of money so their kid can feel special. It's not the worst thing in to world to do to a rich kid because it might be the only way to get him to work.
Also, because the U.S. market is simply bigger and there is more wealth there, I think if there is a hedge fund manager with legitimate superstar potential, there is a good chance he would move to the U.S. because it is easier for him to acquire funding there.
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SJWs are just performing mental gymnastics to rationalize why everybody is racist/sexist/homophobic/etc. Buffett never said that women should act like the Lady in the joke. The reason why the Lady acts in that manner is because the unnamed narrator judges her for saying yes. The irony is the joke (and the fact that some people don't see it and simply agree that women who say yes are not ladies proves another point). If you ask old people about it, a lot of them would get it. The joke would not have lasted decades if it is simply "LOL, women who say yes are whores!".
The idea that all old people are misogynists because women had less equality in the past is pretty ageist and discriminatory. Old people learn and adapt to social changes too.
Is The Bottom Almost Here?
in General Discussion
Posted
Low levels of investor allocation of equities to bonds doesn't really mean too much in my opinion. That could simply be interest rates going up from near zero.