Spekulatius

I think some southern states, especially Florida may get hit hard next. We have also seen the videos with the spring breakers and even last weeks the beaches were crowded as nothing has happened. perhaps the warmer weather helps, but I don’t think it’s as much of a factor for than people think. Lot’s of old people there as well, this could easily become Italy.

Had some Woodchuck cider as a starter and I am now sipping Sonoma county Cabernet. I’m well stocked and can last probably 2 month. Plus I get a shipment from my Finger lake wine club early April. If you like wine, wine clubs are great way to support a winery by the way. Mine allows to customize shipments and shipping is only $5, plus I get a 20% discount.

The bill will have a lot of garbage in it regardless of who wrote it. In like the a German system better where the largest party write the bill together in committees and then do a formality vote. Germany pushed though their stimulus bill, we are in here for a period of public haggling before every party got their share of pork in order to vote on this. That public haggling is pretty much part of the process. TARP in late 2008 was just the same thing.

Fair enough. What's your take on the Democrat's reluctance to support the stimulus bill? What do you expect of them? A revised bill is expected. I mean c’mon - did anyone really suspect that some reps draft a bill basically overnight for a blank check worth a couple of trillions and everyone else just bursts out in joy and signs this? It’s going to get negotiated and a compromise is going to get signed. TARP was similar and took a couple of weeks to get through. I think this one is going through quicker even though it is severely timed larger in size.

I know that a huge part of the population can’t handle a $800 emergency, but I am surprised they so many real estate investors can’t handle on or two skipped rent payments. I mean we are like 3 weeks into this.

Spring/Summer 2021 would be my guess. When you say this won't be over until Spring/Summer 2021, what do you define as over? Most of the population is vaccinated and there are no more significant flare ups of COVID-19.

The problem with investing based on fundamental right now is that we have no clue what the fundamental are looking like right now, much less in the future. We can anchor on past valuations but that is a poor guide when the ground shift beneath our feet. It seems to me more like an environment where a trader or macro investor does well. There will be a time when the bleak fundamental become clearer and most likely thats a better time for fundamental value investing.

Of course Trump will make that choice! - he is the evil Donald Trump and is a mass murderer. He should have been impeached long ago. While the economy gets destroyed - you guys with good jobs could give 2 shits about Joe/Mary Sixpack that lost jobs and live paycheck to paycheck. Like Trump, they are just greedy money grubbers! Screw 'em. So, yeah - NO debate needed on Trump attempting to save the economy - you guys got it all figured out! You guys are a joke! I didn’t state what choice he is going to pick, but you did.

Anyone else cracking open a brew (or else) while working from the “home office”? Discuss!

Spring/Summer 2021 would be my guess.

This isn't politics. This is a public health issue, and not a theoretical one. The person in charge is incompetent to deal with it. If you want to pretend this is politics, fine, but it isn't. I don't care he's right or left, blue or red, purple or orange. if he was acting rationally and competently in the face of the COVID19 threat, I'd applaud, but he's not, so I'm explaining why I think that is. Now stay civil or get out. LOL Let me know if you think this political: 1. Hillary's a narcissistic personality disorder and likely a sociopath. 2. Biden's not intellectually capable. They were/are the Trump alternative. Can we stick with criticizing the strategy and skip questioning the motivation? Why are you wasting everyone's time trying to derail this thread with unrelated things? By understanding how someone thinks and what motivates them, you can make predictions about what decisions they will make. Trump is currently the president. It's very important to understand how he thinks in this life or death situation with huge economic and institutional impacts on the US and the world. Those who pretend that he's a normal person have been wrong about him at every turn exactly because they don't realize how he thinks and what motivates him. I am pretty sure if it’s the choice is between his re-election and 500k dead, I know what he is going to pick. Telltale sign will be Fauci resigning.

Great resource about Coronavirus from Michael Lin: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZaiDO87me4puBte-8VytcSRtpQ3PVpkK/view?usp=drivesdk

Not only that, but politicians and particularly health & safety politicians seem to have some difficulty understanding the populace. One example: yesterday our mayor in Denver communicates a "stay-in-place" order; the exceptions being essential industries and going out for groceries & medicine. Then he says, "oh by the way, liquor stores and recreational marijuana are not essential industries - so they will be closing tomorrow". So of course, the entire damn city floods every liquor and weed store to stock up. Lines around the block, social distancing be damned. Now I'm not sure I could design a better way to transmit a virus if I tried... Then of course 3 hours later he has to re-classify liquor/weed stores as essential industries. I mean, c'mon. LOL, the public clearly demonstrated what they consider essential. Liquor stores are open where I live too.

I think Fauci is going to resign very soon.

TOU (Tourmaline was recommended in another source /podcast, but I don’t recall the source any more). Some smaller one look ridiculously valued, but if everything sells of so hard, one might just go with the best of breed. I think NG could come back regardless of crude prices. If weaker competitors get shaken out.

Another weird distortion - wholesale gasoline for 19c /gallon, down from $1.5. Weirder than the GFC. People must be driving way less and someone really needs to sell. https://twitter.com/donutshorts/status/1242173934298112006?s=21

Hotels stocks have gotten hit worse than airlines even. DRH is down from $10 to ~$3. Same with a lot of energy stocks.

It is foolish to believe that the economy can be saved by descending into something worse than a 2nd world country with hundred thousand if not millions dying. It makes no sense and is more than foolish thinking.

https://finance.yahoo.com/m/d771d4d4-47c5-324d-bd86-549347e8acce/invesco-mortgage-capital-reit.html

So he's basically aiming for doing worse than Italy... https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/23/coronavirus-trump-says-businesses-could-reopen-soon-while-fighting-covid.html Let's hope this thing just happens to be highly seasonal and his dumb luck holds one more time. Ok, as has been stated Trump is clearly wanting to get the economy moving in the next week or two. What exactly this means is up in the air. The question of the day was something like “will this message not submarine your social distancing message”. The answer was something like “no, this message will motivate people to do a good job over the next week with social distancing so they can get back to normal shortly thereafter”. I bought a bunch of stock today thinking buy and hold. If Trump ignores the advice of his medical experts and opens up the economy my guess is we may see a relief rally in stocks. And i will likely sell everything again and sit in cash. My guess is the virus will reemerge in clusters in many more parts of the country, we will then go back to lock down, and the stock market will plunge yet again. Trump really is doing the best he can. I believe that. And it scares the hell out of me. He was talking about a big celebration, before in his first meeting. Clearly a big gamble is probably his bets chance to get re-elected, if it doesn’t work..oh well. In this crisis, we will see a huge difference between countries with strong leadership and and poor one sadly also good luck vs bad luck.

Be careful with first time home buyers. A lot of them get cold feet. In this environment, I couldn’t really blame anyone.

I agree. I think people would have a whole lot more confidence if they let those “can do“ people do the talking rather than the muppets in the Oval Office. I think at least one “hotel hospital“ in my area is being worked on for needed surge capacity right now as I learned though my wife,

SARS was a warning that Chinese Communist Party never took seriously. I know you mean "we" as a humankind, but that absolves CCP of any responsibility. No one else was in position to shut down these wet markets. Once this ordeal is over, the world should unite and hold CCP accountable. H1N1 originated in Mexico and the Spanish flu most likely in the US. It is true that the Comunist party is at fault her, but let’s face it the condition in many 2nd world countries and perhaps even 1st world countries with industrialized animal breeder make something like this likely to occur. If you watch the series Pandemic in Netflix you get idea that there are several outbreaks in several places in the world at any time. Most of them stay under control , but if not we now know happens.

In Germany the trend is flatting too, as seems to be the case in Italy as the hammer finally came doen. US still had more pain ahead in this department. The reason why everyone looks at headlines is because it is a headline and liquidity (or lack thereof) driven market. I do agree there are some unbelievable bargains out there, short of going into a real depression.

It seems like many states and the federal government are taking a wait and see approach as the number of confirmed cases grows. Based on everything I've read, a national shutdown should have started last week if there was going to be any chance of significantly slowing the spread down. It looks like we're too late. By the time the president announces a national shelter in place, the numbers are going to be off the charts. My personal expectation is the US is a week or two behind Europe. The only upside is it might be over faster. My wife works in healthcare and they are preparing for an onslaught. One large hospital in the Minneapolis area has apparently been working to convert an entire floor to ICU beds. Many countries have effectively shelter in place . Germany has is for a couple days and they have escalated compliance today. It’s too early as there seems to be some weekend reporting effect (with lower numbers on weekends) but the numbers of new infections have begun to show promising trends and so far, the Heath care system is holding up. I think people have come to realize the seriousness last week and compliance has improved, which wasn’t the case in Italy at all. US is still in the exponential growth phase so who knows how it ends.