no_free_lunch

How do you explain Taiwan, SK, Japan? They are still open for business. You are just ignoring facts that don't suit your argument. They did what the experts said, they just did it faster and harder, so now they could reopen (while staying very vigilant with testing, contact tracing, lots of mask wearing, social distancing, etc). That ship has sailed for the US. These countries prove my point. Does it prove your point? I thought your point was that it was impossible for the US to open up again. Yet these countries have remained open. I don't think it will immediately go back to business as usual, of course there will be additional testing. I think the point is it can be done. Given it is an emergency the US will adopt similar procedures. If you want to take the additional procedures and wave it as proof that you are right, then please do so but that is what I see happening. The bigger risk is countries like Canada that remain in lockdown and wreck their economy. To me, this rhymes with 9-11. There were all these fears of a million vulnerabilities in the US. Airports, ports, bridges, power-grids, etc. They opened up. They put in place additional security. It will work here too.

How do you explain Taiwan, SK, Japan? They are still open for business. You are just ignoring facts that don't suit your argument.

I am at just under 90% equity allocation. All based on a rough estimate that it will soon peak in Italy and Spain. I don't feel great about the valuation s but what can you do. Relative to treasuries equities are cheap.

I don't think it's as bad as 08 where it looked horrendous out for a decade. I think there will be perhaps the the most severe recession ever but hopefully short and then followed by a huge rebound over the next year. If businesses reflect all future cash flows it seems overdone. In 10 years will this still have had an impact?

Sounds like an ounce of prevention was worth pounds and pounds of cure. Sure but this is an investing board not a political board. From an investing perspective, I see a disconnect between what the market is expecting from the virus and what will actually happen. If I am right and we shift to a slew of preventative measures that allow the economy to start up in say 6-8 weeks, the markets will have to rally. Right now you have indexes that are down 40% (VB, VO) and where you are looking at 60%+ upside. Isn't this the opportunity of a decade?

Good read on the situation in Japan. They had the infection get started back in early February and are only at 900 cases. This without a major policy response. Japan has an older population and higher smoking rates than say Italy too so it takes out those arguments. Not to downplay what is happening elsewhere but if does suggest that common sense and basic containment may be enough. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2020/03/21/commentary/japan-commentary/japan-still-coronavirus-outlier/#.XnZH06FRUlQ

It follows an exponential growth trajectory if no measures are in place. There is a lot of ignorance here, if you look at South Korea or Taiwan cases are not growing exponentially. This is a solvable problem.

1% of infected died. I believe only around 0.25% of the passengers died as only 1 in 4 was infected.

I think the coronavirus is giving everyone a glimpse into central planning. I'm not saying this is the end or anything. We will probably see massive bailouts, printing of money, and stimulus after stimulus to kick the credit/debt can down the road further. At the end of this I think we will see massive permanent government intervention as the Constitution gets tossed to the side. I'm buying though, I mean what else can you do? Companies and services will still exist after all of this. Cash cows are imo the safest place to put money. Given the vast quantity of printing that we are seeing at the moment, and that it is now accepted across the political spectrum, the dollar does not feel as safe of a refuge as it once did. I am sitting close to 90% stocks (80% pre covid) and it has more to do with lack of confidence in the dollar (cad or usd) than confidence in stocks.

Based on cobafdek, positive news out of China/South Korea it appears it may be a good time to add. I really feel this is full bore mania and everyone just knows that the market will continue to drop. Maybe this is the apocalypse but maybe this is just another challenge that we will solve. I don't know all the details but I can see a future where we go about our lives but with a number of safeguards. More testing, some social distancing, better hygiene standards, that sort of thing. To link back to investing i am looking at senior focused REITs with NHI on the top of my list. Dividend is over 13% and debt is somewhere around 7x ocf. I am open to other suggestions.

I see the same thing but I don't understand it. How can bond funds and stocks sell of at the same time? One thing is clear, the jig is up for the central banks.

This is hardly worthwhile of this investment board but I bought VO. Mid-cap US ETF. Seems like a good compromise between survivability and upside. It would need to surge over 60% to get back to prior highs.

Similar situation in Canada. CAD has weakened by 10% over the past couple weeks.

Anyone looking at the Canadian banks? They are getting lucrative here. 6-7% dividend yields. Prices are back to 2006 levels.

Thanks for the feedback If it is a matter if control At this point Italy has country wide isolation. That should be more effective than SK measures. So it seems likely you see a peak in mortality, perhaps very soon. I have to think we will learn about procedures to control thus thing and gradually WD will adapt and life will return to normal. My "concern" as an investor is the market could swing back very quickly as soon as there is any evidence of a peak.

I agree. If you want to see the impact of left leaning governments look at Canada and what did Canada really do differently? They didn't stop travel. Everything is being done at municipal and provincial level. Just last week Trudeau was pompously lecturing about knee jerk reactions. Finally now, the whole country is going into lockdown but still all handled provincially . How did we go from knee jerk to this. The correct response would have been to lock down the borders much earlier. However the left was too preoccupied with their image to take such draconian measures and the right dismissed it. Many mistakes on both sides.

I keep thinking about South Korea. Somehow they managed to control it. The case counts have been static there for the past week and in total they are at 71 deaths. Remember that they were the first flash point outside of China. Is it possible it will peak soon in Italy as well?

I guess it is possible that markets close. It happened post 911 but only for a week. I believe that was prompted in part by concerns of a follow up attack. In this case I don't see it happening. Things will have to get much worse. They didn't close down during the second world war, is this really worse than that event? The markets didn't close for the Spanish flu either.

I'm not a doctor but what are they going to do at a hospital. You just help to overwhelm the system if you go in. I am getting sick too now and I plan to stay at home unless I actually feel critically ill. There is no cure, what are they going to do? Consider too that if you don't have it you might get it going to the hospital. There are some things he can do like eat healthy, vitamin C, lots of warm water, get as much fresh air as possible, keep exercising. Focus on that, hopefully just body takes care of it. Just echoing my own procedures. .

Cancer surgeries are elective surgeries, aren't they? Turning ORs into ICUs will effectively prioritize covid-19 cases over cancer surgeries, regardless of patients' age and odds of survival. My wife (52yo) is doing pre-operative chemo. She is supposed to have a curative surgery in early May. If the system is overwhelmed by then, she is a walking dead. Canada is uniquely ill-prepared to deal with this because our system runs at/over capacity at the best of times. Disagree. Our borders remain wide open. All twits below are from yesterday or today. Thank you Eli. I will add to your posts that medical staff are not being provided with protective equipment such as masks unless dealing with known coronavirus patients. I am concerned what will happen if this starts to spread in the hospitals. There is all this talk of bed capacity and that is an important statistic but Canadians should be aware they can barely staff the existing beds pre corona virus. We should be taking all precautions to keep our medical system intact.

Viking, Canada did do okay in the GFC but the stock market has gone nowhere. The US did horrible but they have actually provided a return to investors. Despite all these leftist arguments, I don't see many stock recommendations outside of the US. Maybe BAM, maybe. There is a huge disconnect where all I hear is trump caused the virus, the US can't handle it, socialism will win in the end. On and on, all garbage. In the end the US is where you are putting your money and when the left manages to crack that country too, it is all over. I am not worried about coronavirus, we will work through that. I am most worried about the left. If you think I'm full of it, go look at the performance of Europe or Canada since pre GFC. These countries have all the answers and yet their economies are a complete mess. If socialism is the answer, then show me some evidence of where its paid off.

The dividend yield on the tsx index is around 4% right now. Lowest level since 2013. Below the highs from 2006. This is amazing to watch.

GD. People are still going to buy weapon systems on a go forward basis, corona virus or no corona virus, doesn't make a difference.

Based on the number you listed, if there are 2.8 beds per 1k people, there would only be around 1m beds in total. Where did you get 4.6m beds from?

Bought some CFG. Basic thesis is we have a small regional bank selling for less than 1/2 book value with a 6%+ dividend. I know the economy is going to be a mess but I am betting that the feds provide some sort of relief to keep the banks from going under.