Spekulatius

I don’t think it’s a mutation of the virus causing this. It’s more likely that with so many cases and 100 thousands and of infections, some people or kids in this case have a different and adverse reaction to this virus, one of them with similar symptoms than Kawasaki’s disease.

This doesn’t sound that great: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-07/china-study-finds-5-to-15-of-covid-19-cases-are-reactivated

Biden and Trump both get infected before the election and don’t make it.

I know Dalal.Holdings mentioned this before, but there is more and more evidence that Vitamin D is protecting against COVID-19 or at least the severe progression: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/new-study-claims-vitamin-d-deficiency-may-impact-coronavirus-mortality-rates-2020-05-08 Anyways, cheap insurance with very little downside if it doesn’t work. So take in some sun when you can or some Vitamin D gel tablets.

We have crappy diets, resulting in first world problems like high blood pressure, diabetes etc. In rural China and rural Africa, people have 110/70 blood pressure well into their old age. In the western world, with processed foods and high salt and high sugar, we have extremely high blood pressure and diabetes rates very early in life. Our bodies don't fight off viruses as well as healthy people. My view is it's largely diet based. All, the above and second and third world countries also have reporting issues, plus the epidemic has not run its. course yet. There are reports of bad situations in Ecuador (Quito) and Brazil but numbers are hard to come by.

Yes, I think they the gist of it. BRK is valued like a conglomerate at a discount to the sum of parts. Can’t be taken out or broken up either. Buffet definitely spooked some investors at the somewhat ghastly annual meeting.

What kind of company is this? NVE is a leader in the practical commercialization of spintronics, a nanotechnology that relies on electron spin rather than electron charge to acquire, store and transmit information. The company manufactures high-performance spintronic products including sensors and couplers. What, what? You should read the fun facts: https://www.nve.com/funFacts.php These make everything clear, no? I think we'll have to ask Spekulatius to explain this stuff to us. Quantum electronics. This Spintronics was supposed to be a great technology 30 years ago, but ended up being used only in niches.

Shouldn’t be an issue any more. For regular surgeries etc, hospitals are open for business. I think some truly elective stuff (mild hernia etc.) may still be pushed out depending on the area. The bigger issue is that some patient fear going to hospitals or doctors now out of concern contracting COVID-19.

Thank God the leader of the free world is an intellectual colossus, eh? Hardly so. However, the US can take a few punches while Brazil cannot. It’s mostly because theYS can print $ and borrow trillions for almost nothing. Brazil cannot do that, their currency tanked already and they have issues with inflation as is..

Some on this board hate FRFHF/FFH, but what are your thoughts on MKL relative to FFH? Do you just like the S&P500 plus portfolio returns Markel delivers better than the deep value dumpster-diving Prem prefers? FFH seems pretty cheap right now too, and I've considered adding to my baby position. There is a whole lot more pessimism built into FFH right now because people don't believe the investment results will be good going forward. From 60% of book, they don't have to be great to get a decent return in the equity. But I think investing is hard, and Prem is fundamentally a good investor who made a couple large bad bets (particularly deflation hedge which might have become pretty valuable around now) which really dented performance. If you back out the losses from that large bet, results are only mediocre since 2010. BRKB> MKL>> FFH, imo. Based on current prices, risk adjusted.. Also worth a look: TRV , CB (own a bit TRV). Today, I added some BRKB

I also added GD and TRV and restarted CMCSA and ORI. Strange disconnect in the Market, some stocks go to the moon, others into the doghouse.

Re India - GDP growth isn’t everything. India has substantial problems. For example inflation picked up from ~5% in 2019 to 7.35% lately. That’s a huge headwind as it causes a weakness in exchange rates relative to the dollar if purchase parity is kept. The valuations on India that I am seeing are just no attractive considering this backdrop. You can buy bald for book value and with 20% ROE in Brazil right now if you care, but the country is run by a moron and the economy is probably going totally into the toilet as they can’t borrow for nothing like the US can. You can make a lot of money when the situation improves and they rerate, but they also can do an Argentina and you are out of luck. For the time being, I‘d rather be in anything dollar or Euro denominated.

Can you imagine if Obama or W. Bush gave this job, during a pandemic with 70k deaths so far, to his cousin or brother-in-law or whatever? Deep state is to blame. It's a witch hunt - nobody wants to work for El Presidente. Only some true patriots like Jared-boy are sacrificing their lives and working 24 hour days covering the holes left by the evil apparatchiks who are gleefully pushing for Trump's downfall! Shame on deep state! Go Jared-o! Make vaccine great again! In my opinion, Trump is just Chavez with a better starting point in terms of institutions and economy. Chavez was roasted early on for running the country “like his hacienda“, that’s exactly what Trump does. Chavez even had his own news show on TV where he would endlessly blabber nonsense without script just like Trump “Coronavirus show”. Both are populists . They are really two sides of the same coin. Given enough time ( which he won’t have because of term limits) we would end up at the same point.

For the coagulation part, it's been suggested that anticoagulation could be associated with a better outcome for more severe presentations but most people admitted in ICUs these days typically get anticoagulation anyways so this does not seem promising in terms of more than a possible marginal improvement in some cases. The more promising treatment options will likely directly interfere with the viral load itself and not with the consequences of the virus. Yes, my wife works with dialysis patients exclusively and there are a lot of them them need dialysis to due to COVID complications (kidney shutting down). She noticed right away during the week in late March with COVID patients that here dialysis machine was jamming up and something was wrong with the blood of these patients. It is true the the doctors now right this with blood thinners and also clot busters. It is tricky for my wife, because if something goes wrong these patients can bleed out in minutes. Still, the prognosis for these patients doesn‘t seem that great, from what I am hearing from my wife. The real breakthrough for outcome will be to prevent this Complication of organs shutting down to begin with, imo (talking as a layman here).

There a certain age bias in this current situation , both on terms of health as well as financial risk. Zell has a lot more to lose than to win at this Point than let’s say a 30 year old private equity guy. First, he has a much higher chance to get killed by this disease, second with this being an unprecedented situation l he really doesn’t know how this plays out economically. So he won’t play until he sees it, plain and simple. Compare this to a 30 year old private equity guy who probably is willing to roll the dice with other people’s money and if it doesn’t work out, he is just going to try again a couple of years later with a different shop. The different starting situation and incentives lead to different decision making bias.

Please get back on topic - nasty disease, death, ventilators , lack of testing. Plenty to discuss without each other calling names.

Thank you for elaborating, Spekulatius, What does that imply in this particular context? It means they depending on the goal of the QE, the ECB actions are Not consistent with the German constitution. It’s seems that the ECB can do QE (buying sovereign bonds) to stabilize the monetary system, but they wouldn’t be allowed to buy bonds with the stated goal to bail out a foreign ECB member government. What happens with this verdict depends on what the German politicians do with it. I see it more likely thwt after this verdict, the “whatever it takes “ policy of the EVB could run into resistance from German politicians. This verdict is a result of a lawsuit from the CSU (the conservative sister party from Bavaria ) which have been critical of Draghi in the past. This all dates back to the time the Bundesbank was governing the Deutsche Mark and per German constitution, their only goal was monetary stability, not low unemployment or increasing growth, at least not when monetary stability would be impaired.

Are you going to get tested now? I am not eligible per prevailing criteria apparently, so no. I've heard that you can pay some doctors $100 for an antibody test. Probably depends on locality and availability though. Dr. Scott G mentioned something about it yesterday. The easiest way for me would be to lie about symptoms on the application form. Antibody Tests only work a while after exposure when your body had time to produce antibodies, which probably wouldn’t show either way for me yet, assuming the exposure was just a couple of days ago. In addition, there is the issue with the false positives, when your presumed risk is small .

The problem is as follows: if mall/whatever reopened, I would go there if I knew I'd be the only person in the mall. But then store(s) don't get enough business. OTOH, if everyone rushes in, then I wouldn't go there. So likely you can't get many people there. It's also possible that there will be a bad feedback loop: people don't go to malls, cases don't rise, people think that it's safe and go to malls, then cases rise again, rinse, repeat? Restaurants are more complicated than stores. Even if I'm the only customer there, there is a risk of getting infected from the staff. More risk than if I ordered for delivery. So screw going to restaurant. Most people can’t conceptualize risk from something not visible, so they will conclude that Malls are safe, because other people go there, which ironically makes them less safe.

Are you going to get tested now? I am not eligible per prevailing criteria apparently, so no.

Are you being quarantined? Or tested? Or made to work from home? Or was it just a social call of "you might be screwed, but please continue comrade"? It‘s the latter. I don’t meet the criteria for testing apparently. For the time being, business as usual.

Bloody hell! How much power does this court have? It‘s the equivalent of the US Supreme Court in Germany. There is nothing above it.

Finally, the “invisible enemy” (Trademark pending) hits close to home. Our HR gal called me about my contact exposure with one of my close colleagues last week. His wife tested positive and he is likely too (test results pending). Luckily my own exposure with him was pretty limited because I kept at social distancing at work too and have my own office. His cubicle neighbor next to him likely is not that lucky. My colleagues wife most likely got it through an outbreak cluster at her workplace according to my colleague (I texted him). Both are doing fine so far, his wife only symptom is losing her sense of smell.

Added both of these and a touch of RTX, VZ I abused RTX for a trade, but trying to wrap my head around this, RTX really is BA with a better balance sheet and less baggage, But it’s still half commercial aerospace and I expect this sector to lose 50% of their revenues probably for a couple of years. It will come back, but the path to get there won’t be pretty for a while. I think a lot of these stocks in commercial aerospace are most likely overvalued.

Bought back some BRKB. I felt like swimming naked without owning some. Also added a tad more GD.