no_free_lunch

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.

Very likely yes, but that doesn't mean I am wrong. I feel if you are to clobber the right-wing with an argument you should apply the same rationale and criticism to the left. Reading through your posts, I appreciate the intellectual honesty you are all showing right now. I think there is stupidity on both sides. Trump trying to downplay the virus to avoid election concerns. Trudeau trying to avoid offending anyone and in turn endangering his whole country.

Meanwhile, in Canada. So much as we will complain about the US handling, what is Canada doing? We refuse to close our borders because we don't want to make knee-jerk reactions? So fine, we test and that should be done, but shouldn't we be stopping traffic from infected areas? Or for those who are so upset about US handling, how do you rationalize what Canada is doing. We will continue to let people in and spread the infection but it's all okay because we are testing once people become sick. So at least we will be able to watch more in real-time as this infection spreads through the country.

It is the same in Canada. When you see relatives die while on a waiting list it will challenge your confidence in public health care. In the Canadian system it is all about fighting, fighting to get treatments, fighting for surgery, fighting against being bumped. Trust me, it's not so rosy here either. The worst is if you are high income you are paying those taxes to feed this incompetent, lazy healthcare bureaucracy and in the end they will just let you die. There is also no preparation at the hospitals. If they have an infected patient, yes they will glove and gown but only AFTER they find out there is an infection. No general precautions, at least as a few days ago.

It is good to be skeptical but I keep coming back to China's reaction. The country is locked in a cold conflict with the US. Much of that boils down to economic growth. Given that background they aren't going to shut down huge parts of their economy voluntarily for a regular flu season. The government officials in China made a cold calculation that the cost of letting the virus run wild outweighs the economic hit of mass quarantine. Their actions indicate it is serious.

On the private/public health-care debate, correct me if I am wrong here but aren't most drugs developed specifically for the US market? Either by US companies or international companies for the US. I hear of other countries re-producing drugs but I don't hear of many break-throughs. It seems self-evident because if my statement was false there would be this huge assortment of free generics and there would be no market for the "evil" pharmaceuticals.

Viking, what country IS handling this well? In Canada they kept telling us there was nothing to worry about. Then they pivoted to , well maybe there will be disruptions, be ready to self quarantine. That isn't going to work, too many selfish people. I have family in health care. They are not prepared, no way. For small volumes sure, but a mass infection with large numbers needing respiratory help. That is the bigger issue, which is under played by the media. It's the 4 or 5 people for every fatality who survive but need round the clock acute care for an extended period. Let's not politicize what is clearly a global phenomenon.