Spekulatius

AZ not looking good at all. While the higher number of positive cases can be explained by higher testing numbers either, the higher % positive definitely points into the wrong direction, as does in the increasing number of hospitalizations. The number of death is still small. TX and a few other states in that neck of woods show similar trends.

I think 2020 is far worse than 1999. Compared to what’s going on right now pets.com looks viable in retrospect. I think it should just IPO again and I bet it would surge because if the nostalgia value. What's making you say that 2020 is worse than 1999? I remember stories on places like 20/20 (or something) about how much money people were making. Well, we have the stock market of 1999 and the economy of 2001 ( after 9/11) at the same time. Add to this a government about as competent as the Weimar Republik’s if you care. For completeness,

I think 2020 is far worse than 1999. Compared to what’s going on right now pets.com looks viable in retrospect. I think it should just IPO again and I bet it would surge because if the nostalgia value.

Trump has a point (imo) pointing out the protests On one hand and the resistance to allowing campaign rallies on the other : https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/08/trump-to-resume-campaign-rallies-this-month-as-states-loosen-coronavirus-limits.html However, the protesters skewed young and mostly wear masks and the protests were outdoors, while Campaign rallies would be indoors and the audience as well as the headliners (including himself) skew older. Will they wear masks? This will be an interesting experiment.

Another anecdotal observation. They don’t buy Stocks that are about to go bankrupt because they don’t know about the impending bankruptcy, they buy them because they go bankrupt, having observed that bankruptcy often causes stocks to spike up. So now, some traders front run the bankruptcy or the bankruptcy traders.

Did bankrupt companies stocks actually pop in 1999? I don’t think so. 2020 may actually be worse than 1999: If you think about this too much, you go

USA! USA! USA! Make Covid Great Again! i was part of an interactive online session today dealing with risk management and COVID-19 (how to establish protocols, guidelines when the sky falls etc) and there was a relevant part. One of the participants showed a risk-consequence matrix: low risk high risk low consequence #1 #2 high consequence #3 #4 For many scenarios, CV exposure often ends up in section #3. This is, in a way, similar to driving above the speed limit or investing in an overvalued market. The #3 area often gives rise to controversies in the application of collective measures imposed on individuals. A disconcerting aspect is that individuals seem to go through a two-step process: a) risk perception and b) risk tolerance. How does that work in Las Vegas? Well, the crowd going to Las Vegas is probably not that strong in risk assessment and statistics to begin with. Same with the protests in a sense, although I think the risking catching the Virus at a protest is lower than at the casino. Are the buffets open? Might as well go all in. A while ago the major of LV gave an interview. It was something to watch.... Edit - I checked for some sort of recent visitor experience and this sounded a whole lot for subdued then the Twitter walkthrough above: I found the lack of staffing quite interesting.

Anyone noticed that trends in a lot of states are ticking up. AL, AR, AZ, CO, CA, TX, FL and others. Some of it can be explained by the number of tests going up, but when number of tests go up and % of positives go up and hospitalization rates, it most likely a real trend. We will see how much of a trend this becomes - I guess it is expected when opening up the economy. The NE states still show downward trends, but of course we haven’t opened much yet.

^ I think the bullish take for suburban houses that their appreciation For 10-15 years has lagged so far below core city areas now that they have become a great value in some areas. It’s highly attractive for some millennials who probably get into the age of having kids where the better suburban schools and more space make this option more attractive. Then we have a trend towards remote working and the pandemic which generally was far worse to experience in cities as additional factors lately.

Yes, and that is why the WHO should Continue to perform a study (or at least finish it) even when the odds are long Remdesevir is not just expensive, but also a drug that needs to be Intravenously in 5 or ten rounds applied, which makes it unlikely a game changer even if it works. HCQ is cheap and even if it is only modestly effective might have a significant value especially for the many poorer countries, which are really the main focus of the WHO anyways. Why not add an arm with Zinc in the Solidarity study. I would prefer exactly same dosage regimen as done by NYU grossman study. Many doctors believe in this Zinc addition. I earlier cited a NY doctor and LA doctor. Here is another article, this from India. ...... Along with HCQ, zinc is also normally administered to Covid patients. Doctors said, “The virus is inside the cell and zinc cannot get inside the cell for biochemical reasons. HCQ opens the door and lets zinc in. That’s all it does in this context,” said Dr Praveen Kumar, a physician at a private hospital. "The antibiotic azithromycin protects the patient from secondary infections.” Meanwhile, another renowned cardiac surgeon said, “In Karnataka, the drug has cured many. Cardiac arrests have happened due to various other comorbidities and can’t be linked with this drug alone.” Doctors and medical researchers suspect that several drug companies in the US want to push new drugs that almost do the same work as HCQ and are lobbying for its ban. “But the central government being very firm on the usage of this drug, it’s highly unlikely that its usage will be stopped to treat Covid patients,” a senior doctor said. https://www.newindianexpress.com/cities/bengaluru/2020/may/27/karnataka-doctors-to-continue-hcq-for-treatment-2148433.html ....... When doctors from NY, LA and India saying Zinc helps with HCQ and HCQ and Zinc are very cheap and can be easily provided to a lot of people and HCQ at these doses is already approved for long term use for Lupus, isnt it proper to test that first? Note: Not a medical advise. These are prescription medicines. Consult your doctor. For discussion only. I take zinc supplements myself. They supposedly help against common cold and may help against COVID-19 as well. There is minimal downside so I don’t see why not. Taking antibiotics as a prophylactic is generally not a good idea, I think. It increases the chance of Having to deal with antibiotic resistant strains later. I would think it is better to take it as needed generally.

If ~10% exposure is enough to cause herd immunity, the how do you explain the extremely high positive test rate (>30%) for antibody in Chelsea (the hardest hit community in MA)? If 10% exposure were enough, the 30% exposure should have never occurred. https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/04/17/business/nearly-third-200-blood-samples-taken-chelsea-show-exposure-coronavirus/ I haven’t seen much updates lately on antibody test results. Some other communities have been evaluated in our neck of woods, but the Chelsea study was never repeated. This study was from mid April, so the positive test rate should be even higher now and close to the herd immunity threshold. On many other points you made, especially deferring medical care, I very much agree with you. I while ago for example, I went through a CC transcript from TMDX, a company that works in the field, of improving organ transplants. They pretty much stated that all organ transplants came to a screeching halt in March 2020, which means that many organs went to waste (got buried) because there was literally chaos and nobody knew how to deal with hospital capacity (mostly reserved for covid) as well as how to ensure that organs weren’t from infected donors (since there wasn’t sufficient testing ). While this is addressed by now (hopefully) it means that many organ transplants didn’t get done and since there is a shortage of donor organs, some will not get transplants don’t just get deferred, they simply will not get done for people that might have otherwise gotten them.

The market was up when the unemployment numbers were worse than expected and the market was up when the number was much better than expected. I think the market just looks for an excuse to go up!

Yes, and that is why the WHO should Continue to perform a study (or at least finish it) even when the odds are long Remdesevir is not just expensive, but also a drug that needs to be Intravenously in 5 or ten rounds applied, which makes it unlikely a game changer even if it works. HCQ is cheap and even if it is only modestly effective might have a significant value especially for the many poorer countries, which are really the main focus of the WHO anyways.

Everything from Richard Branson Kelcy Warren (Energy Transfer) for MLP’s Bill Ackman (Gotham Partners) Everything Marc Cohodes shorts....

You don't understand. The fact that revenues are down 20% means that the stock should be flat or up. Since the revenue growth will be 25%+ just to get back to the old revenues! Market is forward looking, duh! Not happy to admit it, but I very clearly do not understand! For the company, I work for (manufacturing business) the costs have gone up across the board. Higher salaries (temporarily) additional consumables (PPE) and cleaning and the occasional shutdown when someone tests positive. We also had some supply chain disruptions although those have waned.

There was at one point a belief that the sickest were shedding the most virus, but now there have been study results indicating that viral shedding is highest when pre-symptomatic, if that is true, you may be a little too optimistic Another issue is that shouting has been estimated to shed 1000x as much virus as simply breathing. Think of the indoor choir practice example that is often cited. I saw many examples of a someone without a face covering screaming right in someone else face from less than three feet.. I hope they weren't infected because that's got to be extremely high risk. Yes, the highest Viral shedding is asymptomatic shortly before shortly symptoms. My Thinking based on what I can stitch together though is that people they never show symptoms will never show high viral shedding at any time. Which makes sense if you think about it they people who never show symptoms likely als ways keep the virus in check with their immune system. At least that’s a plausible explanation why the largely asymptomatic kids never seem to create much transmission to more susceptible adults in schools. If transmission from kids to adults in a school setting were common , it would already have shown up as infection clusters in Denmark and Germany, but so far that it not the case. The stuff they doesn’t happen is often as insightful than the stuff they is happening. When we think for example about the much commented upon spring break parties in Florida a while - well we never heard much about infection clusters that could be traced back to these events. It’s also a fact that Florida did much better than many expected in this epidemic. The likely factors that helped were that the spring break parties occurred mostly outdoors and involved mostly younger folks. Invert this and put a bunch of older folks in a badly ventilated (I assume) confined place, which we call assisted living or nursing home and we very much know what happens. All the above is not a sure fact, more of a hypothesis, but it matches the observations so far. If we know about the do’s and the Don’ts we can open up the economy smartly with reasonably low risk.

Have you looked at EMGC? There's a (public) writeup on VIC. EMGC is a fundamentally different business. RGA stock up 12% today. Glad I covered yesterday. they also closed a subordinated bond offering. Looks like they are trying to reinforce their balance sheet, which is a smart move.

While I think there is a risk that the protests contribute to spread of COVID-19, there are mitigating factors: 1) a lot of protestors tried some measures of social distancing and wore masks 2) The protests were outside, which reduces risk substantially (of course we do not know what emote stores do before and after) 3) Most protesters as well as front line police are younger. Not only are the less likely to get sick, they are lesser likely to spread COVID asymptomatic ( the latter is my own conclusion). We likely erred on restricting outdoors activities too much. I don’t think there is much reason to close beaches or parks, assuming the people going there behave reasonable. It is likely even opening schools is lower risk than thought, based on observations from countries in Europe which have reopened schools recently. High risk areas are badly ventilated high density indoor spaces like bars, some restaurants, offices, churches, sport venues night clubs, and business that require close customer contacts like nail salons, hairdressers etc.

If you poke around Twitter, the sources indicate that buyers interest has recovered and inventory has tightened. The record low mortgage rates surely help and I think mortgage rates will likely go even lower because the margins to treasuries are fairly high right now. There seems to be a temporary supply/demand imbalance in some areas with little depth to the market and more motivated buyers than sellers. That dynamic will likely be short-lived. This could well be. COVID May be a larger deterrent for sellers to put a house on the market and moving somewhere else than for a buyer to tour a house and buy one. It’s hard to predict though. A lot of people predicted a steep drop in 2001/2002 and the dip was very shallow and short lived back then.

Holy shit! Everyone in the US needs to read and reflect deeply on what Mattis wrote. Mattis is a Republican, a professional soldier, a patriot and has intimate knowledge of who Donald Trump really is as a person and how he thinks and acts as President. This message is not from a partisan Democrat hack. Mattis’ is very clear in his assessment of the situation and the President. Donald Trump is clearly not fit for office (and it is not even close). How anyone with a working brain can continue to support this man completely boggles my mind. No, the alternative is NOT worse. That is a false choice. Read the underlined section below if you still do not understand why he must be defeated at the polls in November. “...Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership. We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society. This will not be easy, as the past few days have shown, but we owe it to our fellow citizens; to past generations that bled to defend our promise; and to our children.“ Being divisive, creating chaos and then trying to benefit from it is Trump’s playbook. It’s pretty much how he works, he is a one trick pony in that respect. It has worked for him for a long time, but at some point, it will stop working. It better be sooner than later.

Well, the Russians were ripping the US and the rest of the world off, because they had no competition. The design of the Space shuttle was from the early 70’s, and the idea was that a ) partly) reusable spaceship would make space cheaper. That really never worked out, because the space shuttle was complex and the end, it cost about ~500M to launch. I guess it is a case of and project management , where every little of the many steps make sense and the end result doesn’t. The US should have pulled the plug on this in the 80’s after the first shuttle blew up,Knut I guess it was just from an institutional POV just easier to save face and soldier on. The real savings are when you look at what Russia was charging the US to ferry astronauts to the ISS. It was something like $80M per astronaut so $160M per launch with US astronauts. As an American I had heard/read very little about SpaceX's primary competitor Arianespace but the price war between the two is fascinating and it will be interesting to see what Arianespace comes up with. Just the ability for US companies to launch from the Cape as opposed to French Guiana has to translate into significant savings. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_launch_market_competition

If you poke around Twitter, the sources indicate that buyers interest has recovered and inventory has tightened. The record low mortgage rates surely help and I think mortgage rates will likely go even lower because the margins to treasuries are fairly high right now.

Who exactly encourages the protests and the property damage (which was done by looters not protesters)? The protests are unfortunate, but they were not organized by any party and they are not Trump’s fault either. He just poured gasoline on them by sending the national guard and the tweeting stuff like “after looting comes the shooting”, which surely didn’t help.

Sold short a bit $RGA (Life reinsurer) at the open when reading about their stock offering at $81. I was surprised it opened as high as it did ($89) and then even briefly went higher. I first thought it was a potential long until I read the 424B offering filing. It appears that they loose about $400-500M for every 100k death in the US or 1.4M worldwide, so it is very levered to excess death (which is basically the risk they insure). I closed this out for a small gain later, but I really think this has a potential as a short as I think we could be a few hundred thousand dead in the US before this is over and potentially a million. In the latter case, RGA likely would be toast. Anyone has a clue how to get statutory filings. Pre- Corona, they had ~$700M in excess equity and COVID probably took $400-500M of this, so I assume their actuaries got nervous and that’s why their raised capital. It’s cheap and trades far below book, but every financial on its way to going broke looks cheap and below book. RGA suffers from a double whammy of excess death and low interest rates so it could be really in a bind right now. I know it’s kind of Macabre to bet on a demise of such a company, but hey what happens, happens whether we bet or not. If nothing else, it could be a way to insure against the tail risk of the virus getting worse again. I own some so insurance positions like TRV, ORI and BRK that I wouldn’t mind protecting.

That’s always the answer you get when you ask a barber if you need a haircut.