beerbaron

Allright, I was having a beer an playing with numbers. I saw that somewhere in Israel they were actually doing group testing instead of individual ones. Basically they had 64 persons spit and then if the group was positive they would test 32, etc... I tough it was an interesting concept, just like a DB works you can find a value much quicker by splitting the pile in halves over and over again. I then went to take Quebec numbers (I live there). Assuming there is 0.3% of the population that has Covid, you don't want the group to be so large that 100% will test positive but you don't want the group so small that it's a waste of resources. If I want about 25% of the initial test to turn out positive, how big should I make the initial group test? Well it turns out it's about 8000. For a population of 8M that is 1 000 tests (Quebec has a capacity of 12K/ test per day). So easily we can test all groups of 8000 on day 1, the next day, the groups that turned positive are split into 4 and so on. Within 11 days we would have tested 8M people, found out the individuals, and we could repeat the process again. 22 days and we would be done with it. Quebec has a capacity of 12K tests per day, so that would not even interfere with the screening of the symptomatic persons. Besides scaling 8000 persons per group what else am I missing here? BeerBaron

I have a kegerator with 4 kegs, have been home brewing with wort pre-made bags for 10 years now. On keg 1 is cider made from apples from an orchard near by. It's close to 6 months of age now and it's surprisingly getting a smoother taste over time. i would not have expected flavors to change in cider in cold + carbonated conditions. On Keg 2 is a Festa Brew White beer infused with dried Hybiscus flowers. For any white beer lovers I'd recommend hybiscus infused beers, they tend to replace any aftertaste for a more floral tone. On Keg 3 I have All dressed beer, which is basically the leftovers from a 22L batch that can't fit into a 19L keg. It actually does not give bad results. Certainly blends in a lot of tones! On keg 4 tomorrow I'll be kegging a Festabrew West Coast IPA dry hopped with 1 Oz Citra. I might add another once in the keg. It really makes the citrus takes come out but ruins the first 5 beers as the leaves did not have time to settle completely yet. I'm fully stocked with 5 boxes 22L of wort unfermented and 1 in the carboy. I should be good to survive the next few months. BeerBaron

I doubt the elephant would be a bank. BRK had to divest banks in the past for legal reasons and I can't think why the situations would be any different today. BeerBaron

Gracias, it feels to me HY is nowhere near where it should be. I would be expecting a greater spread than the the GFC. BeerBaron

Which ones indices are you looking at? I have access to Barclays which has the info on all of their indices. I'm looking to see if it could be worth it for me to move from some equity to corporate or muni bonds. I will especially be looking for companies with high financial leverage that might wipe out the equity but survive after chapter 11. I was thinking spreads for: Muni VS Treasury High Yield VS Treasury Investment Grade VS Treasury BeerBaron

Hi, does anybody have a good site to chart debt spreads of bond indexes? Thanks BeerBaron

Partly because of this graph: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%9320_coronavirus_outbreak#/media/File:Illustration_of_SARS-COV-2_Case_Fatality_Rate_200228_01-1.png I'm 40 years old and I see my parent every day. If I catch this and my parent get it from me, there is 1 chance out of 6 one of them will die from it. For flu there would be 1 out 60 chances my parent would die from it. One order of magnitude bigger. BeerBaron

HI I'm entertaining the idea of launching a startup that would sell products online and I'm looking for primers on the overall e-commerce business. More specifically I plan on selling products exclusively on .com (more specifically Amazon to begin with). I'm pretty well versed in the brick and mortar merchandising, advertising, portfolio/product management and product development. What I'm lacking is the .com knowhow, more specifically: - Advertising (channels, measuring, tweaking, effective methods, etc...) - Product launch - Acquiring consumer feedback, boosting reviews in a cost sensitive fashion (not Amazon vine program) There are a lot of info online but I'd rather not listen on get rich in 10 weeks schemes, I'm looking to build a real sustainable business, not sell crap on e-bay. Does anybody have any books, podcast or lectures to recommend? Thanks BeerBaron

Quebec is a tourist area you will get by just fine in english. Enjoy your trip an outstanding city with lively nature and night life. Beerbaron

There is a great waterpark in val cartier. Also the acquarium is kinda nice. Take a day on isle d orleans. It is very nice and rustic, 20 minutes from downtown. Anything on grande allee is nice. This is a place for party tough.

I don’t understand your comment. How does issuance impact the pricing? Attached is a little scenario comparison to explain. Hope it clarifies the logic. BeerBaron DRIP_Scenarios.xlsx

Auto dividend reinvestment is a bad deal for you because the shares being purchased for you are usually being issued at the same time...it's a good deal for other shareholders tough. It's a better option to purchase shares from the open market because no shares get issued. Beerbaron

You hit it right on the nail. Companies are not even remotely thinking about bringing back production to US. If you want firsthand experience, i m currently travelling to Asia, back from Vietnam guess what i was doing there... My company is goin full gas on getting out of china, like hundreds of SKU moving, halt on all new projects in China, etc... It was going to happen, just made it a top priority. Now how ho we profit from it is the question. Beerbaron

I dont think the Chinese currency will drop 25%. Also resources are traded in USD so yes, labor drops 25% but the material cost is basically the same. BeerBaron

For the last few weeks we have been spending quite a bit of time at my day job discussing new US tarifs on China and what it means for our supply chain that is all established in China. And one thing that stands out is that everybody was putting their hands in the sand thinking that Trump's tarifs were bluff but now I believe people are realizing that it's real and it might last for a long time. Believe me, the tarifs will have a real impact on China, but nobody is seriously considering returning to the US. Hence, I have been trying to find a way to profit from this by finding which countries will benefit the move of manufacturing jobs. If you think about it we might have a huge manufacturing center of 1B+ inhabitant lose jobs by the millions which should a huge bonanza for the other nations that will get this job's migration. Vietnam comes first to mind, but it's a communist country so does anybody have an idea of an indirect play on this one? Laos is also communist. Cambodgia, Thailand, Indonesia or Philippines might also be appropriate. A good way would be to buy banks in those countries. Anybody has good ideas around that theme? Thanks BeerBaron

One of my best friend that I have known since I'm 4 years old has been plague with the same disease. When I was 7 years old they were telling us that my firend's life expectancy was 16 years old... today he's 38! Remarkeable the progresses that have been made there, thanks to your fondation and others! BeerBaron

Thanks a million for the tip about the calculation being made on a cost basis. Turns 100K+ into 60K :) I'm so glad to be out of this shylock type of fine. BeerBaron

Hi, I just got a letter from the Canadian Revenu Agency asking me for 950$ + interest because I declared my T1135 two months late. This is the first year that my forign assets went over 100K and got a newborn on April 2nd, hence had other business to atend to besides doing my taxes (usually the governement owes me money so I never pay interest). It seems like a VERY severe penalty for failure to file on time, especially considering it was my first time filing. Anybody else had this issue and were you able to settle with the CRA for a lesser amount? Thanks BeerBaron

Did they break even on those lawsuit yet? BeerBaron

I am looking for a crypto currency that has a volatility of up to 50%, is there such a thing? BeerBaron

I did not trade in the last month but anybody knows how did Questrade support the spike in trades? IB could be running on AWS backbone that scales the CPU power based on demand. No need to maintain a constant 20x capacity. BeerBaron

Don't claim victory yet, this is round one. BeerBaron

I share your frustration. I miss the old days where Parsad had time to maintain the culture of the site... not a 100 pages on those crypto speculations but solid research by team members. BeerBaron

Similar to your thinking, one would assume that if people were looking for store of value one would assume that gain in cryto would translate into an equivalent drop in gold. When I look at charts of golds it seems quite flat, suggesting one is speculation while the other is business as usual. BeerBaron

Southside Bankshares (SBSI) in the US is well run. BeerBaron