Spekulatius

On that end, my wife is technically on a 32h work week, but had 55-60h the last few weeks, I clouding Cmas and new yearThey sometimes try to incentivize nurses coming in extra days with considerable cash bonuses (hundred of $ in addition to overtime). Burnout is a real problem and if a family member is sick it’s Game over for a few weeks (which is part of the issue with staffing it appears). Somewhat related, we got a message from our sons school yesterday that go from hybrid to fully online, because a student was tested positive and it turned out he attended a larger New Years party with many other students (against the current rules in MA) but they can’t identify them. ( I guess nobody wants admit breaking the rules) so without possibility for contact tracing, they shut it completely down for 2 weeks at least. Hope they had fun and it was worth it .

My own take is that instead of focusing on who should get it first too much is concentrate on getting ad many people vaccinated as possible quickly. The “who” is less important than the “how many”. Frontline workers don’t like to get the vaccine - “Next one please”. I think this is one thing that Israel gets right : https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/01/world/middleeast/israel-coronavirus-vaccines.html Agreed, it's insane some places are only vaccinating during business hours when they have doses on hand to administer. In Canada some of the vaccination centers in the most populated province closed for the holidays even though they had vaccine available. Europe seems to have the same problems based on what read and hear from my brother and they are perhaps even worse.Germany has build up vaccination stops in addition to healthcare facilities to increase the capacity to give shots. Those should be open 16 h a day but somehow they are not. Then there was enough of BioNvax shots ordered and the Astra Oxford vaccine is late and the EU decided not to give any emergency authorizations for COVID-19 vaccines on principle apparently. It is quite infuriating to see how states and countries can botch this for one reason or another. I am guessing that this will all run more smoothly in 1-2 month but it sure is painful to watch. Now I start to sound like Gregmal :o.

The book 'Stumbling on Happiness' by Gilbert was a huge influence on my life when I read it. It was long ago, but the main points have always stuck with me. Recommended. I haven’t read the book, but this seems great advice. One thing is sure that happiness doesn’t scale with the money spent.

I am sorry to hear this as well. A losing a close relative and particular a brother is a watershed moment. My thanks to all those who prevent more losses in lives this year @DocSnowball @Dalal.Holding and many others.

To deal with exactly this issue - we have an adjustable target total equity cost (adjusted for dividends since day-1), and a maximum market value forcing a capital repatriation. Within limits, as our MV rises, so does our target equity cost. Proceeds typically not repatriated until 3-6 months after they were raised. As we prefer concentrated positions, our downside is exposure to multi-year STRINGS of losses of 25-50%+/yr; hence, you aren't selling this to OPM. Our upside is that repatriated capital (as and when it occurs) pays off mortgages, funds education, capitalizes new opportunities, etc. Immediate benefits, that show up as incremental discretionary cash flow every month. Works for us, but everyone needs to evolve their own process. Good luck. SD On that end, after refinancing my mortgage at 2.75%, I don’t think prepaying is a good use of capital right now. I did end up prepaying some of mine at the end of 2019 (we were paying close to 4% back then) because my wife insisted. I guess it’s like everything else - mortgage is a form of leverage (one of the best forms of leverage) and one need to take this in account when considering the overall financial situation. As things stand currently, i just think there are a lot of ways to make better use of capital taking some short term, but little long term risk.

This is kind of besides the point, but I believe that quote you always see from CNBC about "you gotta be in the market because the 10 best days account for all of the return in any given year". It's such a cherry-picked fact. When did those trading days occur? Probably during periods of heightened volatility where the market was swinging up and down wildly. So in order to get the best trading days you had to stomach the worst trading days too. I've never actually looked at this before, but it confirms my suspicion about the "best trading days" garbage CNBC feeds retail investors. The attachment shows the 2020 trading days ranked in order (by absolute value of returns) and shows you that the best and worst days were clustered around March and April with a few exceptions outside that time. If you state how much of the market return occurs in a few best days, you also need to state how much of a decline you could have avoided being out of the market for the few worst days to make this assessment more symmetrical.,

My own take is that instead of focusing on who should get it first too much is concentrate on getting as many people vaccinated as possible quickly. The “who” is less important than the “how many”. Frontline workers don’t like to get the vaccine - “Next one please”. I think this is one thing that Israel gets right : https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/01/world/middleeast/israel-coronavirus-vaccines.html

I am at a hair less than 10% this year. One excuse is that I managed it with way less volatility than the SP500. I am happy with the result, it could have been way better than that. This year was the year for the bold but I can’t afford 50% hits in my age. Pluses were waiting out some declines from early to mid March and mistake was waiting too long until the end of April to do something and partly those went into the wrong sectors (not tech heavy enough, defense stocks etc). I am pretty happy with my portfolio as is right now and I think everyone who made some money, stayed healthy, and has a job is a winner in my book.

My own picks for 2020 were Megacable and DD. Both didn’t really work (went on a COVID-19 hellride ) but stocks recovered. I sold them on the downdraft for what I consider better opportunities. Megacable is still on my watchlist - their Operation performance was Ok, but being located in Mexico for sure didn’t help. US cablecos (which I owned but subsequently for decent returns) were the better choice.

Happy New Year all Cheers nwoodman Thank you for sharing. It's interesting to eyeball the chart showing the dramatic growth of alternate capital sources and relatively slow growth of traditional sources. "Reinsurance disintermediation appears to be gaining traction as global capital pools seek higher returns and uncorrelated asset classes in a low return world." (Slide 38.) This is a narrative heard before (i.e. MKL/Nephila), but the chart really helps illuminate the drastic change over the past 10 years or so..... Isn't this the primary argument for why insurance rates have been low? Crowding out and too much capital? It's why I've been so skeptical that this hard market will last, because I don't see anything changing the trend of outside capital flooding the industry at lower rates of return. Any thoughts anyone has on this and why it's not expect led to affect this hard market would be helpful. Yes, I think it is correct to assume that hybrid capital which can be quickly ramped up has shortened the hard cycle duration. It is instructive to read the annual report and presentation from RNR (a very good underwriter which also manages several hybrid capital pools) on this matter. I am a little more guarded in my view of insurers here than most because of low interest rates and any hard market arbitraged away by hybrid capital that can quickly swoop in.

I think $BABA has one of the best risk reward ratios of any large cap stocks here at current prices. Short term volatility is pretty much a given, but in the long run, I think buyer should do well here.

Gheez Castanza, we are 9 month into this, your wife is a nurse and that’s how well you are informed? You are correct, there are no LT studies on the vaccine and there is Little known a out the LT effects of COVID-19 either, except indications that there are some that could be a problem. Most importantly, the vaccine will absolutely absolutely prevents you from carrying COVID-19 and infecting others - in fact that’s one of the main benefits of vaccination.

The distribution plan in IL and Chicago is similar to what is being done elsewhere. For the initial week, "they" chose to prioritize regional "hub" hospitals where prevalence has been high (the candidates there include frontline healthcare workers). Early distribution plans also include nursing homes (residents and at-risk staff) and first-line responders. Over time, it can be assumed that the age profile will skew higher. Same here. Frontline workers first without age consideration.

Yes, Rudy was well respected then but now has become a shadow of his former self. Blasio is simply not able to govern the city effectively in a time it really matters (like Rudy did around 9/11/2001). I think there will be a big reset coming, one way or another.

Reduced SIMO a bit.

I can see wabuffo‘s point. If the treasury issues a t-bill to Pimco, it would in exchange for cash. Now the treasury would hold cash. Nothing would change (no money creation , just an asset swap) until they spent the cash.

Enjoyed: Christmas crossfire ( German film Noir with a bit of a seasonal setting). Imposters - 3 episodes in and the script and acting is pretty good Bridgerton - nice production. Has a bit of a woke touch to it with all races equally represented, despite being a fictional setting in England late 19th century. The Midnight Sky -yawn

Yes, I agree with this. Norway indeed may be a model to follow. I think the larger stations around highways may be fine as they can adjust their business model, but I am not sure about smaller ones in more urban/suburban areas where I stead of refueling folks just charge up at home. ai have no idea how this plays out, but know the gas stations have to compete with typically larger Conviencience stores as there wouldn’t be much of a difference. I also think there isn’t much to fear in the next 5 years in terms:of gasoline sales for EV, but one needs to take into account that the market may reduce the terminal value of assets accordingly over time due to shrinking duration of cash flows.

Imagine 100% of cars sold this year were EVs. Total car and light truck sales per year are around 17 million in the U.S.. There are a total of 274 million registered vehicles in the U.S. In that draconian scenario, it will still take 16 years to replace the fleet. If you are projecting it will take a decade to hit 50% of sales to be EV, when do you think we will hit 100% sales to be EV? My point is we have many many years ahead of usage of high quality refinery and gas station assets. The lower quality ones will start shutting down first. I think we have to handicap percentage reduction in volume of gas by timeline. How much reduction in gas demand do you need to make refining and to a lesser degree distribution a crappy business due to margin pressure - that’s the key question not when 90% of the gas demand disappears. Prior to the shale becoming a factor, refining had a lousy decade due to overcapacity. This could well happen again.

Study from Germany in the Munich area: -about 3.3% have antibodies (2x the value from April) - 0.47% derived IFR rate (which is a 2x the guesstimate from the CDC) - 4250 samples https://www.br.de/nachrichten/wissen/studie-rund-drei-prozent-der-muenchner-mit-corona-infiziert,SK3xCl6 The dark matter of undetected infection is way lower than it was during the first wave In March/ April due to more testing.

What's (not) funny is that I'd bet that those who argue for the strongest measures in a public forum like here all broke rules one way or another. This guy blocked me, I have no idea why. I recall him being a TESLAQ fellow, but I am not exactly a bull. probably no big loss that I can‘t read his tweets.

You know, we generation X folks and boomers had Janus funds back in the day, and the millennials now have $ARKK:

Looks like my kind of place too, but I would go for the home brewed beers rather than the whiskeys. I really don’t drink whiskeys much, but prefer the smoother Irish whiskeys over the scotch’s generally. I am currently having a bit Calvados, which is my favorite goto drink for something a bit stronger.

Tikr.com does provide 1 year forward estimate, but I am not sure they are consensus estimates (I think they are: https://app.tikr.com/register?ref=o94y6y Another thing, I can access CapitalIQ through my public library (Boston public library) for the time being.

It seems that other sources have a more nuanced recap what Fauci actually said. One thing is sure - if a more transmissible form of COVID-19 starts to dominate, the threshold for herd immunity will go up.