Ross812

My non-active index based accounts all hold 20% gold. This allocation used to be long term treasuries for rebalancing purposes, but I rotated into gold when treasuries went nuts in 2020. I thought about crypto, but I can't get comfortable with it.

@SharperDingaan to check if I understand what you are saying correctly. Gemeni GUSD are backed 1:1 by USD reserves held in AUDITED cash, T-bills, etc. Gemini needs USD to run/grow their business and uses USD reserves as collateral for a loan. The creditors now have rights to the reserves senior to an individual with X amount of GUSD. Everything is fine unless there are redemptions in excess of USD reserves minus creditor collateral. I'm not an accountant. Are they allowed to used cash reserves as collateral for loans? I assume Gemeni keeps some portion of the interest they collect lending out GUSD and the return on USD reserves. Can these cash flows be used as collateral or to fund growth? I guess I don't understand the business model. How does GUSD earn 8% interest?

How is the Dallas data indicative of ADE? I put together this composite chart from the source you linked: Even in the last weeks where community spread is almost entirely Delta, only 16-17% of the cases are in vaccinated individuals (49% of the county population, slide 17). The 51% of unvaccinated residents make up more than 80% of the cases. I could not find total weekly hospitalizations, but 139 vaccinated individuals were hospitalized over the above CDC weeks 5-30. This is a rate of 4.2%. Total hospitalizations since the start of the pandemic have been 22,381 with 322,873 confirmed cases (slide 1). A rate of 6.9%. Total deaths since the start of the pandemic have been 4,224 which is a death rate of 1.3%. This compares with the CDC weeks 5-30 data above of a 1.58% death rate in unvaccinated individuals and a 0.6% death rate for vaccinated individuals. If the vaccine were not effective, we would expect similar numbers and death rates between unvaccinated and vaccinated people. If ADE were occurring, we would expect the death rate of the vaccinated to exceed the unvaccinated.

It is more than an uptick in hospitalizations and deaths in the vaccinated population, you would need to see numbers in excess of those seen in the unvaccinated population to indicate ADE. ADE would lead to worse outcomes for vaccinated individuals than unvaccinated. Here is some more data: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/08/10/us/covid-breakthrough-infections-vaccines.html

5) loan periods are extended. Just like autos (8 yr) and boats (15 yr).

Enhanced unemployment is not UBI. The huge disincentive to working is loss of enhanced unemployment. If you are making $600 a week (15/hr at 40 hrs) in unemployment, why would you work for $15/hr and lose the easy money? UBI would pay you regardless. The person working a $15/hr job would be bringing home $1200 a week in wages + UBI. The incentives are completely different.

ADP, HD, GOOG

Added to BTI and RPAR. Added BABA a couple weeks ago - I want to be in the club too...

That's similar to the way I am looking at it. Also, no one really knows the long term effects from covid. My friend is an OBGYN and had one of her patients to in her late 20's catch a very mild case of covid about 6 months before her due date. Near the due date, the woman was extremely fatigued and had low blood oxygen saturation. They did an x-ray and her lungs were wrecked with the common glass like appearance from Covid. The woman would have been termed asymptomatic with a cough she thought was just seasonal allergies that only lasted a few days. She was only tested as a requirement for office visits. They think her condition will be permanent. I was able to get the shot I'm my 30s due to being an essential worker which extends to finance and lawyers in my state. I would imagine the vaccine supply is ample in my very red state with a liberal governor.

My wife and I are in our 30s and got the first round of the Pfizer vaccine 7 days ago. Though I don't like being sick, the main reason I got it as soon as possible was to prevent spreading the virus to more vulnerable friends and co-workers. I also like to travel internationally for work and pleasure, but don't want to extend my trip 2 weeks if I test positive. Typing this from a hammock in Costa Rica.

Maybe I am not understanding your point, but don't China and India have almost 1.4B population each?

It depends on the account. I manage an account that buys fixed income (PIMIX for those tax advantaged) and long dated options for a group of retirees. In my personal accounts I hold primarily: NTSX - 90/60 S&P/Treasuries LTPZ - 15 yr TIPS EMB - EM Bonds EDV - LT Treasuries VWO - Emerging Markets BAR/SGOL - Gold RPAR - Risk parity etf For individual stocks, I held my nose and bought quite a bit in last March- GOOG FB JPM WFC KMI ATCO H BRK-B V GS

I don't think wealth/income inequality is a bad thing as it incentivizes people to work harder. The problem is this inequality is becoming more pronounced. I would not say there is more incentive to work hard than in 1950, 1970, or 1990 than there is today, but the stratification between the top 1% and bottom 50% has grown tremendously since these dates. http://i2.cdn.turner.com/money/dam/assets/161221173430-inequality-piketty-1-780x439.png The economic boom of the past 40 years and 250% expansion in the economy has overly benefited the incomes of the to 20% which is further stratified toward the top within that quintile. We can state the poor have cars, iPhones, and flat screen TVs all day. Luxury items have gotten more affordable, but this doesn't change the fact 250% gdp growth has been captured by the top 20%, with only a fraction of those dollars have going the bottom 80%. The bottom 80% are include working professionals. Many engineering fields and accountants are making the same real income today as they did in 1980. The speed of stratification has accelerated over the past 40-50 years. Movements like occupy wall street and the rise of mainstream far left political candidates indicates a course correction is imminent.

They must be. Otherwise they wouldn't be so frustrated right now. But I would prefer to confine this discussion to COVID only. Fair enough. Just trying to get a feel for their emotions. I figured if they moved from cash to investments, perhaps that's a contrary indicator. I am really worried about the US sitting at 11% unemployment right now and I think the stock market is being propped up by savings from those who are employed and the system is stable because the government is essentially paying those prevented from working to stay home. Ex. As an employed person, instead of spending 10k on a hotels, eating out, and shopping this summer I left the money in the bank or moved it into an investment account. That 10k that would have went to the waiter, hotel staff etc. has been added to the government balance sheet. I think another round of shut downs will happen in the fall/winter once the northern states go inside for winter and I don't really see good behavior from the populace as a whole that is going to allow life to return to normal. If the payments to the 11% unemployed stop, we are going to see defaults on rents, mortgages, and other debt and fallout is going to pivot from the government to those holding the capital. I have been extremely conservative in how I have been investing for several years as I manage money for several retirees. My drawdown in March was 6%. I am sitting in a combination of CDs, Treasury Futures, PIMIX, PAIDX, IAU, and TIPS. I bought bull call spreads on FAANG stocks in March and called away in June. Since June I have been playing around with selling weeklys on KMI and WFC. I am waiting for a the VIX to drop in order to but longer dated call options on SPX.

Yes, I was initially not going to add the broker name, but then decided to fuck it and throw them under the bus. So it's not like the trade is legally not allowed in retirement accounts, right? I'm hoping then that they come to their senses and allow it because it's their own agents that approved and I really want to sue them for lost earnings if they force to unwind. Have you tried Interactive Brokers? They are the only brokerage I've used who will let you do pretty much whatever trade you want inside an IRA. Cash covered options spreads are calculated correctly. Cash used to cover the call is designated "maintenance margin" and is subtracted from cash available to trade.

If a doctor treated 350 of 350 patients successfully that is a good data point. A normal person when they go to a doctor, they would be interested in how many cases the doctor treated and how many were successful. How do you know how successful he would have been without it without a control group? That, and given the doctor I'd need a lot more than her word before this even becomes and anecdote, much less a data point. The fatality rate for covid is 0.65%. (1-0.65)^350 is 10.2%. In other words there is a 10.2% chance of all 350 paitients recovering with no loss of life. Unlikely? There are a lot of covid patients and a lot of doctors treating them. Say there are 350 doctors each treating 350 patients. The likely hood of 1 doctor not losing any patients is 1-(1-0.102)^350 is essentially 100%.

I bought a 10% position in WFC when earnings came out this week. I have been pretty active in selling puts on WFC (and now covered calls) and KMI which I think are two of the cheapest companies on the market right now. For the last few years I have been in fixed income using the proceeds to by long dated SPX options. With the VIX so high I have switched to selling options instead.

Just had to say I love Civilization and played since the original. I have spent quarantine renovating my second floor which includes the office (This began pre-covid). So unfortunately I cannot get away with purchasing the new title. I would inevitably get sucked in and all other extracurriculars would cease.

Seriously, what hot sh** is this? Did you even look at this rubbage before posting? Ignoring that this is fraudulently claiming to be from TXDSHS, the data is bullshit. Please tell me how they calculated "recovery" rates? Using latest data: Cases reported: 275,058 Recoveries: 142,398 Recoveries/cases = 57% (my calculation) Please save your alternative facts and propaganda for your gullible Facebook friends. Calculated: 1 - Deaths/Texas Population = 1 - 3100/29.6M = bullshit

I'm not sure what point they are trying to make, how deadly is the virus? Well here are Quebec virus data. Tests Positives Deaths Recovery Quebec 706116 56859 5636 99.2% Texas 2644496 250462 3112 99.88% Goes to show that you can't use a single data point. Furthermore, I've heard for a foreign nurse friend of mine that that in France they only count Covid deaths in hospitals. So IFR would be completely different, maybe similar in Texas. BeerBaron covid one-third death rate of flu in Texas. so hard to understand? The magnitude of testing is completely different. % of population tested for flu in 2019 is .6%; % tested for covid is 8.9%. Going by the same logic the flu has a case fatality rate of 32%. All this is saying is 6 months into the pandemic, covid-19 deaths are 1/3rd of full year seasonal flu deaths. Of course cases were not in Texas until March. So it would be more accurate to say Texas is only 4 months into the pandemic. Also this captures deaths from 1/2020 to 7/2020 which is a lagging indicator by about three weeks. Texas started to see a spike on June 15th. There are 3x as many cases today than on June 15th and non of the deaths attributable to the increase in case load is reflected in the number. So really, this is just a bullshit statistic...

The executive branch is going to get an earful anytime there is a catastrophe. You cannot make everyone happy and there is always something that could have been done better. The travel restrictions were a good call. I don't think anyone can really defend the rest of the response though. When China shut down Wuhan and shuttered much of their economy in January, that was a huge wake up call that this could be a big deal. If the message from the top have been 20% of what it was in the last two weeks in mid January, we would be in a very different place. The country follows the leader and we didn't have buy in from a lot of people until Trump changed his tone a couple weeks ago. Our ability to respond was hollowed out; some of that responsibility lies on past administrations who could have taken SARS more seriously like Taiwan or Korea. The rhetoric, tweets, Fox <-> Trump relationship no doubt influenced millions of people and has lead to loss of life. Those lives are on the executive.

Look, if you do one thing right (early China travel ban restriction (fixed it for you) -- which was probably a fluke done because with the trade war he was looking for any reason to pressure China) but then turn around and call it a hoax and no big deal and it'll go away on its own and airtight controlled and give rallies in arenas and and give no clear direction to states and don't mobilize federal agencies for weeks and have incompetents in those agencies (the war on experts for the past 3 years in favor of loyalists/cronies), pre-announce possible quarantines making sure people flee those areas and spread the virus, contradict experts on TV within the very same press conference, etc, you don't get to pretend that you did the right thing early. You still did WAY more damage than good. The first thing to have done would be to have had smart people able to understand the warnings and react rationally to them in the first place, rather than convince millions of people it wasn't a big deal, which by the time that was turned around, you had daily exponential compounding for weeks. The administration is saying it was a travel ban over and over, but it only restricted non-resident aliens who were in China in the last 14 days. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/proclamation-suspension-entry-immigrants-nonimmigrants-persons-pose-risk-transmitting-2019-novel-coronavirus/

Any post-lockdown plans will surely involve mass serological testing of those who are vulnerable and isolating those who test negative, while the rest of us will take care of herd immunity. there's no other way. agreed. but this should have been the "lockdown" plan as well. establish "health census" for underlying conditions and elderly and confine the mitigation resources to them. all of these epidemiologists are using stupid assumptions as to what our health objective should be. it should NOT be reducing infections among the entire population. it should be reducing infections of a targeted population. you need someone with common sense to tell the epidemiologists what to model. 20% of those in the hospital in NY are under 50. If you send the young back to work, we run out of hospital beds. Your number is 1.3% had no underlying conditions; the same article says 77% had lung disease, heart disease, asthma, or diabetes. 48% of americans have some form of heart disease, 8% have asthma, 10.5% diabetes, and 13.5% have lung disease - now I'm sure a lot of those people have multiple problems, but it begs the question how many people truly have no underlying conditions when studied? I'm otherwise healthy and <49, but had pneumonia in January. My lungs are at about 80% as of 3 weeks ago. Should I go back to work?

We have been taking the lockdowns seriously since 12 March and are more than a little stir crazy. Fortunately we can both work from home and are in recession resistant industries. We have been getting take out and coffee twice a week and leaving a 50% to 100% tip trying to help out and show our appreciation for those still working semi public facing jobs. On the portfolio side - 401ks and IRAs are ugly at 70/30 stocks to bonds :'(. The money management side has been a lot better - I have about 25% of our money along with a small group of money invested for retirees and near retirees. I've been using a CD/Bond strategy combined with long term SPX options for a few years now. The options this go around were a bust (-4%) but the account is up 4% since January due to some individual bond trading and cycling some ETFs. It looks like I may be making a few small bets with DITM options and selling puts etc. I will say - I never appreciated the amount of time you will spend talking to investors when the markets plummet. I can't imagine managing 20+ peoples money.