no_free_lunch

Have to agree with Bizarro. I have seen a lot of Canadian talent go to the US. It is because of higher wages. This ultimately stems from the "inequality".

Rather than calling these things gold and silver.. can we rebrand and call them physical crypto? I think this would do a lot to get the hype cycle revving. ;)

I agree, gold stocks are a dog. What do you like in the sector Cardboard? I am not aware of even one compounder over the multiple cycles. Happy to be shown otherwise. Physical gold / silver could be treated separately from an investment perspective. That might make more sense but I just can't bring myself to but into it.

I can't answer for buffet but to me it starts with acknowledging that these are extraordinary times. We are in now our second decade in a row of deflation, or close enough to deflation. You also have obscene levels of government spending with no end in sight. So inflationary and deflationary forces pushing at each other. As long as the government manages to keep these forces balanced it will be fine. If they fail , they will of course, we really will get inflation. Perhaps that is what is happening now with surges in lumber and tech stocks. How meaningful is a WFC price to book valuation if there is inflation?

One thing is clear, the lockdown work. Social isolation works. Go look at one of those new infection graphs. You see it go exponential, flatten and start to recede. Then in June it takes off again. This correlates roughly with relaxation of counter measures and the protests. We have also seen how countries with strong counter measures did not get sick to the same effect. I feel this is the greatest blunder by the right since the Iraq war. Neither party clued into this until it hit north america. However once it did the left was on it, the right foolishly took the bait and the opposite side. As a conservative it infuriates me. I support the right wingers for almost everything and I see how difficult it is for then to get elected. They are correct on so many issues but then they will take the DUMBEST point of view on some issues and screw themselves at the polls. Why in God's name did conservatives think that ignoring corona virus was smart? Do you guys want to see a democratic dynasty? Grow the fuck up, put down some common sense and go issue by issue and choose the right path even if the dems are there first.

You could look back at what buffet owned in the early 80s. I recall there was some sort of metals company in his portfolio but it has been awhile. SD there was inflation in the early 80s and there was high unemployment in the same period.

I find it challenging to manage employees while working at home. Some work as hard as ever, others I'm not so sure about. I could see their being mixed mode, some work at office and some remote but I wouldn't want all remote. I really doubt that people will work as hard when given the freedom of working from home.

Basically.. I think he is saying we need to get real jobs / hobbies and stop wasting our time. Or maybe he is just saying it's time to buy BRK. I will need to do some more research to figure it out.

As Sweden shows there is something in between total lockdown and nothing at all. Trump's plan isn't just a complete reopening and back to February precaution levels, e.g. no precautions. People will wear masks, wash their hands, avoid large gatherings. Hopefully that will be enough in areas with lower virus concentrations. You have to remember that there are human health costs to staying closed. Many medical procedures are being pushed off, people are not going in for cancer screenings to the same levels, mental health problems are surely going to increase, we need money to pay for medicine and medical procedures. Its not black and white. You have to find a balance and staying locked away until zero cases is ignoring these other costs.

This is good to hear. Keep us posted on developments! So hard to know what is really going on in China.

Look, I am conservative, pro-republican so don't think what I am saying is political. Please use some common sense. If this thing spreads too quickly it will overwhelm the medical system. We have ample evidence of this. If it overwhelms the health care system people who get it will die needlessly due to lack of equipment and care. It won't happen that way if we can spread out the infection and if we can put in place policies that lock down people who get infected, as is done in various Asian countries. For those of us in age brackets unlikely to be affected, we risk not getting medical care if we have some medical issue other than covid. Or getting sick and then getting covid which can kill anyone. Look at it from a pure economic POV. If we do these shutdowns and we go back and everyone is still infected we will just have to keep locking down. This could drag on for months and months and cause economic chaos. We are paying a tremendous cost due to the shutdowns, lets make it as effective as possible.

The tech giants biggest cost is going to be salaries. They can do layoffs and or reduce bonuses as ad revenue crashes. Google will also see growth in cloud services due to all the work from home. They are near the top of my list if there is another pullback.

I don't see how you can have higher inflation without a financial crisis. Not with everyone geared up to the debt levels they are. Higher inflation leads to higher interest rates and then lower spending the way I see it. My basic understanding is--inflation good for long term debtors. Deflation is what kills debtors (seen in Great Depression). If you have a 30 year mortgage and locked in at 3% interest a year, inflation of 4-5% would make it easier for you to pay the interest/debt off (negative real interest rate for you), especially if you earn a salary which rises with inflation. Correct but the new debtor now faces substantially higher payments. New buyers drive prices, in particular in housing. It could cause another housing crash. The 70s and early 80s had rising interest rates and it was a disaster. I don't really know the preceding period very well but I don't think they had the huge household debt Bubble we have now. This could be worse. The current set of asset prices, stocks, bonds, housing are all baking in low interest rates. We are in a corner and it's going to be ugly to get out. It won't just be the rich who take the damage here. It will be savers. I'm a saver.

I don't see how you can have higher inflation without a financial crisis. Not with everyone geared up to the debt levels they are. Higher inflation leads to higher interest rates and then lower spending the way I see it.

This is encouraging. In particular the 2 drugs are already widely prescribed so it would seem that will reduce approval times. The FDA is saying there is not enough evidence behind it but what do they have to lose? Hopefully they can find a way through the red tape. It will lead to a huge rally if true. I have never before seen the world stock market reduced to such a single issue. I really feel this could be a huge opportunity if you can stay ahead of the markets. We all saw it in January and some at least were smart enough to get out of equities. Perhaps now you can front run the cure.

Canada has announced 75% federal wage subsidy for small and medium businesses. That has to cover something close to half of all workers. If this is a long quarantine, Canada could be in serious financial trouble. Also in Canada, I saw a link on Reddit about a movement to not pay rent. Rationale being why pay rent when your landlord is a greedy bastard and you are down on your luck. It plays into the legal grey area that landlord s can't evict at the moment.

You can also look at the cruise ship that had the infection. It was discussed on the corona virus thread but only 0.16% ended up as fatalities. This on a packed cruise ship with no concept of social distancing. My only concern at this point is government overreaction. We can be right on the lethality but still wrong on the economy. The Democrats are so riled up right now, I mean look at some of these threads we have here, I think they will try to tank the economy just to hurt trumps election prospects.

Testing is still right here in Canada. Family member has shortness of breath, fever and fatigue. They are in their 30s. Talked to doctor via chat and was told to monitor but testing not needed yet. What this tells me is the case count is definitely understated here. Canada put the brakes on about a week ago so hopefully our stats peak in the next week or so. So far the hospitals are managing fine. Albeit at the expense of minor procedures.

Any good short candidates out there? I saw alwaysDrawing's post and it reminded me that this is a good day to put on a hedge. One candidate I am looking at is AAPL. How in the hell are people going to buy their products if they can't even pay rent? This is a consumer discretionary company in my mind, it shouldn't be selling at 20x earnings. Yes they have cash or tangible book but it is around 1/10 of current market cap. I remember in GFC they sold below their net asset value (not saying that will be repeated but throwing it out for comparison). AAPL is 100% a bet on Corona virus blowing up the economy, I do not expect this to pan out otherwise. I am also almost fully invested so more a hedge against my gut that things will be okay. I am buying relatively short duration puts (June 2020 maturity) that are deep out of the money. If things really go to hell and apple get cut in half they could do 10-15x.

I don't know about BA / TSLA but WMT going down makes sense. It is over 20x earnings for a retailer. Sure they will get a temporary bump due to hoarding but if the economy gets as bad as people believe, then walmart and competitors will eventually take huge hits as well.

Eli, it shows that the concepts trump is pushing are not so far fetched. I agree it will take longer than he says, he's trying to soothe investors to some extent. I think Canada risks being too conservative and damaging the economy. Remember that there is a true cost in lives when you don't have the funds to pay for your health care.

There won't be a return to normal but as long as people are able to work the risk to the economy is negligible.

Sweden is also staying open. Also Japan, Taiwan, South Korea. Don't panic. https://news.yahoo.com/lockdown-wait-sweden-goes-own-way-003057482.html

Canada is talking about a gradual lift of the quarantine. Same thing as trump is saying but we will be more cautious about it. I am assuming that the US will do a gradual return to work, at a state level. If so, it won't be the economic catastrophe people want to believe. So the US goes from $20T debt to say $23T as a result of covid stimulus. Not sustainable long term but not the apocalypse tomorrow either. "The hope is that we can slowly lift these measures, rather than have them completely lifted, and we can control the rebound of the virus such that it does not cause a situation where we overwhelm our health-care system and negate everything that we've done for the past few months." https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/canada-covid-19-second-wave-1.5507522

Yeah, I'm talking to friend in Japan right now and it's super weird. They don't test. There is pretty much no social isolation. Trains are packed. Masks are used, but not by majority and even people using masks take them off, wipe face with hands, etc. It's just super weird that they don't have superspread. Interesting others there see it as weird too. I was just reading something about this last night and the paper concluded they had no idea why Japan hasn't taken off. I guess it's better to be lucky than good. There are 120 m people in Japan. I don't know the numbers but there is a lot of business with China. You can't just throw that massive dataset away as "luck" because it doesn't agree with your hypothesis. What this suggests is the virus is not quite as contagious as we want to believe.