Spekulatius

The VW ID.3 seems to be outselling the Tesla 3 in Europe. It will be interesting how the ID.4 (a bigger crossover type vehicle) will do - the base version is supposed to come out in March 2021 in the US. I think we will see quicker adoption than some people think as it looks to me like the tipping point finally has been reached in EV availability and adoption. Ten years from now, I wouldn’t be too surprised, if the vast majority of new cars sold are EV’s. The UK is already considering a ban for ICE cars starting 2030. If you own a gas station or refinery assets, you are setting on a rapidly melting iceberg, imo. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-11-26/vw-s-id-3-quickly-climbs-to-top-of-europe-s-electric-car-market

Putting this here for a lack of a better location. Interesting Sunday read on the Canadian Avro fighter project which got canceled in 1959: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200615-the-record-breaking-jet-which-still-haunts-a-country For those interested, the BBC has great long form articles about aviation history right now and the above is one of them.

Most traded stocks in Europe - Nov 2020 from Degiro: https://www.degiro.ie/knowledge/blog/most-traded-stocks-november-2020 Tesla has been tops for a while in many countries. Derigo publishes this monthly.

The bull case is that it’s just a Ponzi scheme getting started , I guess. It is a bit concerning to the bull case that they’re are so few bears out there, since almost anyone seems to thinks BTC is going up.

^ big surprise if you live in crowded quarters m use the same bathrooms (that was one way infections were found in the study) and have roommates bunking together (I bet they do t wear mask when they sleep, how could they). My only conclusion for a civilian setting is that I wouldn’t rely on mask preventing infections in a setting like a cruise ship (the closest equivalent). As for the general conclusion of the reference (not the study ) that mask don’t work, I wouldn't agree. If you refer to the often cited danish mask study, check out Taleb’s posts on Twitter. He concluded that the design and even the math of the study is incorrect and that the results actually infer that the mask cohort did show lower infection rates. Edit: corrected for typos.

Added a bit of NOC on recent weakness.

Thats all one needs to look at imo and it can’t be ignored. My wife is working overtime as I type this in various hospitals, as COVID-19 patients are back in our area. The problem with seniors getting isolated is a real problem, but it’s not lockdowns that are causing this, but the virus running rampant. Lockdowns don’t prevent visits to seniors unless in special circumstances.

Significant update - Koyfin now covers foreign stocks. This looks very good after a quickly look: https://www.koyfin.com/help/release-notes/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=release-promo-11-20-global&utm_content=notes-b1

Gold is highly useful for jewelry (malable), has a nice color, does not corrode and can be used to build excellent infrared mirrors (I use it just for that a bit in thin film form at work). The supply of gold will increase less than the supply of fiat money, they why I would bet that over long periods of time, it will keep it’s value better than cash. Diamond is a crappy investment because it needs an expensive and subjective classification system (not a fungible good) and the demand is procyclical and at least used to be controlled by the De Beers cartel. In addition, it is not possible to create artificial diamond that exceed objectively the quality of natural formed diamond.

Es, that’s exactly how I see it. 1980 was a bad starting point since it was quite a bubble in Gold with the price more than doubling within a year and a year later, it halved. Part of what caused this crash were the Volker policies curbing inflation.

Make sense though. Large city with many renters, large population of young and single people and high cost. But I bet Seattle suburbs are white hot. I'm throwing 700k cash offers at 3bed/1bath 1,000 sq ft houses in the east bay of San Francisco. I'm not even competitive apparently... Suburbs have largely lacked the price appreciating that Appartement or houses in the city areas had. I lived in Long Island and now in Boston area and in both cases, houses were still below ~2005 prices. I think RE in thr city core might have doubled with8b the same time frame. If this trend reverses, it could have a long way to go, but I somehow doubt that it will.

China isn‘t really communist any more, it is just run by a party that used to be communist decades ago. The state owned companies are kind of hybrid between both worlds and a left over from communism. It’s not where the puck is going. In some ways China has a brutal Manchester capitalism.

My wife gets anxiety in a clinical setting and her self-administered-at-home blood pressure reading is far lower than what the nurse or doctor will see. I took her into the Mercy Hospital ER a couple of days ago when her blood pressure dropped to 84/57 with a pulse of 91. The triage nurse then took her blood pressure and it was way back up again. This happens to my wife a lot, but she's never had a reading THIS low. What the hospital should have done, but didn't, is lay her down on a bed in a quiet room alone with a machine periodically measuring her pressure every 5 minutes. Her primary care doctor has measured her low blood pressure using that method, and tells her to eat pickles and put salt on her food to manage it. If not, she gets dizzy. My mom get‘s crazy high blood pressure readings when she goes to her doctor for checkups. Then when she his home, it’s back to normal. She has some problems with heart arrhythmia lately, but her doc thinks the high readings SRE due to anxiety - I guess it’s the white cost Syndrome that cigarbutt mentioned. As for false negative COVID-19 tests that’s a problem at hospitals my wife works. Every patient get‘s tested but some test negative even though it looks like they have COVID-19- Then they retest the next day and they sometimes test positive. That means that everyone who with them Better gets a test too because they wear different PPE and follow different procedures based the first negative test result. Crazy.

Hulu has a BF deal for it’s ad supported version for $1.99 for one year. I subscribed to it. Watching the seasonal “Free Birds” animation and it’s actually pretty good. I am slo rewatching the Fargo series that originally aired on FX. I watched Episode 1 and it’s a classic.

Talked with my Mom today (she lives in Germany) and they are putting in several vaccinations location for COVID-19 vaccinations in her town. Vaccination to start in mid December. The vaccinations centers will work in 2 shifts. To roll out mass vaccinations as quickly as possible. Health care workers and first responders come first. https://www.dw.com/en/coronavirus-digest-germany-may-start-vaccinating-in-december/a-55696560 I wish I had a better feeling about rollout plans in the US. This should be front center and focus, imo. @Eric - thank you for sharing your episode and glad you and your family are OK. Do you have any idea how your stepson get infected?

Isn’t the risk with SPAC’s that they announce a crappy deal and the stock falls below par ($10)?

Bought a bit of MITK the last few days. RKABANG brought it up and it looks like a decent growth/ value intersection stock to me.

Yes, governments as well as the potential reward from selling the vaccine caused the development to speed up. It wasn’t just warp speed either - BioNtech got ~460M Euro in R&D funding from the German government for example. Moderna got R&D funding from the US government, I believe. Both had contracts to sell the vaccine (in the US and elsewhere) if they can get approval. The internet really took off after the HTML protocol was developed at CERN in Geneva. Since other countries had it too at the same time, I don’t think Al Gore had much to do with it. The early funding in the 60’s and 70’s came from military funding in the US.

Why would you want to deal with Merrill Edge instead if Schwab, Fidelity or Interactive Brokers? I see no benefit of using Merrill Edge (I have never used it, but used Wells Fargo brokerage). The dedicated investment brokerage offerings are far superior in terms of platform and customer service, imo. Back in the day, Merrill Edge and Wells Fargo gave free trades when you had other products with them, which was worth something. Now everyone has free trades, so that point is moot.

Going back to the topic of the thread - where is the predicted recession like we have never seen before? When is the stock market finally getting the message?

Sold INTC (loss) and reduced PKE, CMCSA and BNTGY

I don’t have much of a clue about CRISPR technology and I am not sure one has to. I have become convinced that in most cases, platform companies are not the way to invest in Biotech. Rather invest in smart management team that are platform agnostic, but have deep knowledge in therapeutic areas and clinical development and let them pick the technology that they think works best. I don’t have many positions in Biotech, but I do have a smallish position in BMRN because I have followed them for a decade or more, when I could find stories in the local newspaper. Now looking at them, they have proven that they know what they are doing and brought several products to market and are cash flow positive now. That’s more like a bet I feel making, but everyone’s view is different.

A smaller doses should not be more effective. I think in a clinical trial in Ph 1 or 2 (where different doses are tested) this type of response is typically a red flag, but then I haven’t looked at the data yet. In any case, the bottom line is we now have 3 proven vaccines with more to come.

Time to get infected before it is too late. A trip to South Dakota is probably your best option.