Coronavirus

[ukvalueinvestment]

Ackman; https://pershingsquareholdings.com/pershing-square-capital-management-l-p-releases-letter-to-investors/

 

So...it looks like this guy held CDS and went on CNBC last week and had a meltdown about the crisis. Then unloaded the CDS Monday and went long stocks and back on CNBC (edit: Bloomberg on Tuesday) touting that everything is going to be ok. How is this remotely allowed/ethical?

 

He brought talking his book to a new level.

 

Lol...makes you respect people like WEB and Munger that much more because they don't engage in such despicable antics and still outperform these scumbags.

 

He was totally transparent about his position at all times.  You are allowed to have an opinion - and I have agreed with his opinion all along.

[Libs]

https://www.wsj.com/articles/is-the-coronavirus-as-deadly-as-they-say-11585088464?mod=hp_opin_pos_2

 

"In Iceland, deCode Genetics is working with the government to perform widespread testing. In a sample of nearly 2,000 entirely asymptomatic people, researchers estimated disease prevalence of just over 1%. Iceland’s first case was reported on Feb. 28, weeks behind the U.S. It’s plausible that the proportion of the U.S. population that has been infected is double, triple or even 10 times as high as the estimates from Iceland. That also implies a dramatically lower fatality rate."

 

"The epidemic started in China sometime in November or December. The first confirmed U.S. cases included a person who traveled from Wuhan on Jan. 15, and it is likely that the virus entered before that: Tens of thousands of people traveled from Wuhan to the U.S. in December. Existing evidence suggests that the virus is highly transmissible and that the number of infections doubles roughly every three days. An epidemic seed on Jan. 1 implies that by March 9 about six million people in the U.S. would have been infected. As of March 23, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were 499 Covid-19 deaths in the U.S. If our surmise of six million cases is accurate, that’s a mortality rate of 0.01%, assuming a two week lag between infection and death. This is one-tenth of the flu mortality rate of 0.1%. Such a low death rate would be cause for optimism."

 

"This does not make Covid-19 a nonissue. The daily reports from Italy and across the U.S. show real struggles and overwhelmed health systems. But a 20,000- or 40,000-death epidemic is a far less severe problem than one that kills two million. Given the enormous consequences of decisions around Covid-19 response, getting clear data to guide decisions now is critical. We don’t know the true infection rate in the U.S. Antibody testing of representative samples to measure disease prevalence (including the recovered) is crucial. Nearly every day a new lab gets approval for antibody testing, so population testing using this technology is now feasible."

 

"If we’re right about the limited scale of the epidemic, then measures focused on older populations and hospitals are sensible. Elective procedures will need to be rescheduled. Hospital resources will need to be reallocated to care for critically ill patients. Triage will need to improve. And policy makers will need to focus on reducing risks for older adults and people with underlying medical conditions. A universal quarantine may not be worth the costs it imposes on the economy, community and individual mental and physical health. We should undertake immediate steps to evaluate the empirical basis of the current lockdowns."

 

 

Interesting article. If the authors are right, it's a game-changer. What's the push-back to this? What are they missing?

[RichardGibbons]

https://www.ft.com/content/5ff6469a-6dd8-11ea-89df-41bea055720b

"The epidemic started in China sometime in November or December. The first confirmed U.S. cases included a person who traveled from Wuhan on Jan. 15, and it is likely that the virus entered before that: Tens of thousands of people traveled from Wuhan to the U.S. in December. Existing evidence suggests that the virus is highly transmissible and that the number of infections doubles roughly every three days. An epidemic seed on Jan. 1 implies that by March 9 about six million people in the U.S. would have been infected. As of March 23, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were 499 Covid-19 deaths in the U.S. If our surmise of six million cases is accurate, that’s a mortality rate of 0.01%, assuming a two week lag between infection and death. This is one-tenth of the flu mortality rate of 0.1%. Such a low death rate would be cause for optimism."

 

Interesting article. If the authors are right, it's a game-changer. What's the push-back to this? What are they missing?

 

The thing they're missing is that their model doesn't match the evidence.  In the UK, they're testing 8000 people a day, but until yesterday were finding fewer than 1000 cases per day.  Presumably they're testing the people most likely to have COVID-19, yet far fewer than half the tests come back positive.

 

The only way that half the population could be infected and yet only a small percentage test positive is if either the tests are far more likely to have a false negative than a correct positive, or if the people they're testing are far less likely to have the disease than everyone else.

 

By far, the most reasonable hypothesis is that their model sucks.

[mcliu]

If you get coronavirus but have recovered. Would you show positive or negative on these tests? Also, would you be immune to the virus?

[Dalal.Holdings]

Ackman; https://pershingsquareholdings.com/pershing-square-capital-management-l-p-releases-letter-to-investors/

 

So...it looks like this guy held CDS and went on CNBC last week and had a meltdown about the crisis. Then unloaded the CDS Monday and went long stocks and back on CNBC (edit: Bloomberg on Tuesday) touting that everything is going to be ok. How is this remotely allowed/ethical?

 

He brought talking his book to a new level.

 

Lol...makes you respect people like WEB and Munger that much more because they don't engage in such despicable antics and still outperform these scumbags.

 

He was totally transparent about his position at all times.  You are allowed to have an opinion - and I have agreed with his opinion all along.

 

Doesn't matter if his opinion was right or wrong. He has a long track record of taking positions and then going on media outlets pounding out his thesis. One big example is Herbalife short position. So, taking a short and then going on CNBC and trashing it repeatedly. May not be illegal, but certainly not noble behavior. There are many investors out there who do not resort to such tactics that outperform this guy significantly.

[EliG]

If you get coronavirus but have recovered. Would you show positive or negative on these tests? Also, would you be immune to the virus?

 

You would show negative on the existing RT-PCR test.

 

A serological test for COVID-19 antibodies can detect past disease. The tests have been created but they are not available commercially just yet.

[gary17]

https://edmontonjournal.com/news/politics/david-staples-who-policy-fuelled-canadas-failure-to-slow-covid-19-at-borders/

 

sad the Canadian government had a good start but lost it all ... now country in financial ruins (and $20 oil)

[Viking]

https://www.wsj.com/articles/is-the-coronavirus-as-deadly-as-they-say-11585088464?mod=hp_opin_pos_2

 

"In Iceland, deCode Genetics is working with the government to perform widespread testing. In a sample of nearly 2,000 entirely asymptomatic people, researchers estimated disease prevalence of just over 1%. Iceland’s first case was reported on Feb. 28, weeks behind the U.S. It’s plausible that the proportion of the U.S. population that has been infected is double, triple or even 10 times as high as the estimates from Iceland. That also implies a dramatically lower fatality rate."

 

"The epidemic started in China sometime in November or December. The first confirmed U.S. cases included a person who traveled from Wuhan on Jan. 15, and it is likely that the virus entered before that: Tens of thousands of people traveled from Wuhan to the U.S. in December. Existing evidence suggests that the virus is highly transmissible and that the number of infections doubles roughly every three days. An epidemic seed on Jan. 1 implies that by March 9 about six million people in the U.S. would have been infected. As of March 23, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were 499 Covid-19 deaths in the U.S. If our surmise of six million cases is accurate, that’s a mortality rate of 0.01%, assuming a two week lag between infection and death. This is one-tenth of the flu mortality rate of 0.1%. Such a low death rate would be cause for optimism."

 

"This does not make Covid-19 a nonissue. The daily reports from Italy and across the U.S. show real struggles and overwhelmed health systems. But a 20,000- or 40,000-death epidemic is a far less severe problem than one that kills two million. Given the enormous consequences of decisions around Covid-19 response, getting clear data to guide decisions now is critical. We don’t know the true infection rate in the U.S. Antibody testing of representative samples to measure disease prevalence (including the recovered) is crucial. Nearly every day a new lab gets approval for antibody testing, so population testing using this technology is now feasible."

 

"If we’re right about the limited scale of the epidemic, then measures focused on older populations and hospitals are sensible. Elective procedures will need to be rescheduled. Hospital resources will need to be reallocated to care for critically ill patients. Triage will need to improve. And policy makers will need to focus on reducing risks for older adults and people with underlying medical conditions. A universal quarantine may not be worth the costs it imposes on the economy, community and individual mental and physical health. We should undertake immediate steps to evaluate the empirical basis of the current lockdowns."

 

 

Interesting article. If the authors are right, it's a game-changer. What's the push-back to this? What are they missing?

 

We all hope there is a way to combat the virus without having to resort to some sort of lock down. The more aggressive the testing (and contact tracing), the softer the lock down. Information and facts informs what you do. Both Canada and the US have not been testing aggressively enough and therefore have limited information so some sort of lock down is the only solution in the near term.

 

My issue with the study is they are simply making a blind guess, which forms the basis of their analysis: “ An epidemic seed on Jan. 1 implies that by March 9 about six million people in the U.S. would have been infected. ”

 

And then they say: “ Given the enormous consequences of decisions around Covid-19 response, getting clear data to guide decisions now is critical.”

 

[jondoug]

https://www.ft.com/content/5ff6469a-6dd8-11ea-89df-41bea055720b

"The epidemic started in China sometime in November or December. The first confirmed U.S. cases included a person who traveled from Wuhan on Jan. 15, and it is likely that the virus entered before that: Tens of thousands of people traveled from Wuhan to the U.S. in December. Existing evidence suggests that the virus is highly transmissible and that the number of infections doubles roughly every three days. An epidemic seed on Jan. 1 implies that by March 9 about six million people in the U.S. would have been infected. As of March 23, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were 499 Covid-19 deaths in the U.S. If our surmise of six million cases is accurate, that’s a mortality rate of 0.01%, assuming a two week lag between infection and death. This is one-tenth of the flu mortality rate of 0.1%. Such a low death rate would be cause for optimism."

 

Interesting article. If the authors are right, it's a game-changer. What's the push-back to this? What are they missing?

 

The thing they're missing is that their model doesn't match the evidence.  In the UK, they're testing 8000 people a day, but until yesterday were finding fewer than 1000 cases per day.  Presumably they're testing the people most likely to have COVID-19, yet far fewer than half the tests come back positive.

 

The only way that half the population could be infected and yet only a small percentage test positive is if either the tests are far more likely to have a false negative than a correct positive, or if the people they're testing are far less likely to have the disease than everyone else.

 

By far, the most reasonable hypothesis is that their model sucks.

 

Their model seems to cherry pick data with a preconceived result in mind. They start with the first case in the US being reported on Jan 15th, but then pick Jan 1 for their model. And then, this:

The best (albeit very weak) evidence in the U.S. comes from the National Basketball Association. Between March 11 and 19, a substantial number of NBA players and teams received testing. By March 19, 10 out of 450 rostered players were positive. Since not everyone was tested, that represents a lower bound on the prevalence of 2.2%. The NBA isn’t a representative population, and contact among players might have facilitated transmission. But if we extend that lower-bound assumption to cities with NBA teams (population 45 million), we get at least 990,000 infections in the U.S. The number of cases reported on March 19 in the U.S. was 13,677, more than 72-fold lower. These numbers imply a fatality rate from Covid-19 orders of magnitude smaller than it appears.

Picking results from 450 NBA players who have extremely high degree of contact and mobility and extrapolating it  to the general population of 45 million is dubious at best.

[arcube]

Ackman; https://pershingsquareholdings.com/pershing-square-capital-management-l-p-releases-letter-to-investors/

 

So...it looks like this guy held CDS and went on CNBC last week and had a meltdown about the crisis. Then unloaded the CDS Monday and went long stocks and back on CNBC (edit: Bloomberg on Tuesday) touting that everything is going to be ok. How is this remotely allowed/ethical?

 

He brought talking his book to a new level.

 

Lol...makes you respect people like WEB and Munger that much more because they don't engage in such despicable antics and still outperform these scumbags.

 

He was totally transparent about his position at all times.  You are allowed to have an opinion - and I have agreed with his opinion all along.

 

Doesn't matter if his opinion was right or wrong. He has a long track record of taking positions and then going on media outlets pounding out his thesis. One big example is Herbalife short position. So, taking a short and then going on CNBC and trashing it repeatedly. May not be illegal, but certainly not noble behavior. There are many investors out there who do not resort to such tactics that outperform this guy significantly.

 

Could not agree more. This guy is a complete turd ball...comes on TV ..starts crying about his Dad and shows concern and all that...I can't believe how pathetic he is. Where was the crying when he was trying to fkover a lot of diseased patients when he was all in on Valeant...he is just a pathetic human being.

[Orchard]

So...it looks like this guy held CDS and went on CNBC last week and had a meltdown about the crisis. Then unloaded the CDS Monday and went long stocks and back on CNBC (edit: Bloomberg on Tuesday) touting that everything is going to be ok. How is this remotely allowed/ethical?

People talk their book all the time. I don't see the issue with it.

 

Now if you made listening to it illegal it would go all away pretty quickly.  ;D

[Liberty]

So...it looks like this guy held CDS and went on CNBC last week and had a meltdown about the crisis. Then unloaded the CDS Monday and went long stocks and back on CNBC (edit: Bloomberg on Tuesday) touting that everything is going to be ok. How is this remotely allowed/ethical?

People talk their book all the time. I don't see the issue with it.

 

Now if you made listening to it illegal it would go all away pretty quickly.  ;D

 

Yeah, people are only mad when people they don't like make money. At least he always said what he was doing, and nothing he said was incorrect, the best way to fight pandemics is a short but tight shutdown, followed by aggressive containment once you know that the shutdown has worked, rather than do a half-assed shutdown that leaves the disease growing exponentially on a daily basis for months and overwhelms and destroys a country's healthcare sector making mortality much worse. His thesis was that the country had to take things seriously and do shutdowns, so when he saw the signs that this was happening, it didn't make sense to stay hedged, no? The things he had CDSes on were probably already down like 80-90% by the time he got on TV, you think he's going to pretend to be worried in the hope of a few percents more? Or maybe Occam's razor is that he's really worried about his father and mass-scale avoidable suffering and about politicians not acting quickly enough in a situation where every day matters. People act as if Ackman's caused the 30% drop while in fact his impact was probably barely noticeable for a couple hours on one day.

 

Those who want to be angry at lack of transparency should look at Eric Trump telling people to go all-in on the stock market in early March (he has since deleted that Tweet), or at Trump's businesses and debts and assets that we still don't know much about, no tax records or transparency there, no idea what he and his family and his friends are buying or selling based on prior knowledge of policies and tweets and such. If someone's going to talk their book, I like to be able to look at that book, at least.

[Mephistopheles]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-25/hydroxychloroquine-no-better-than-regular-covid-19-care-in-study

 

Hydroxychloroquine, a medicine for malaria that President Donald Trump has touted as a treatment for coronavirus, was no more effective than conventional care, a small study found.

 

The study involved just 30 patients. Of the 15 patients given the malaria drug, 13 tested negative for the coronavirus after a week of treatment. Of the 15 patients who didn’t get hydroxychloroquine, 14 tested negative for the virus.

 

The results of the study weren’t statistically significant.

 

FYI.

 

This is silly. Both the chloroquine and the placebo showed that almost everyone was cured in both cases. It's a useless study since everyone was cured. Do people recover WITHOUT chloroquine? YES obviously since there have been like half a mllion infections and vast majority cured WITHOUT chloroquine.

 

So it's useless to have these stats. In other words, in order to show (or not show) a statistically significant difference between placebo and chloroquine, you need a good amount of people who did NOT recover.

[Liberty]

https://ourworldindata.org/covid-mortality-risk

 

 

The case fatality rate isn’t constant: it changes with the context

Sometimes journalists talk about the CFR as if it’s a single, steady number, an unchanging fact about the disease. This is a particular bad example from the New York Times in the early days of the COVID-19 outbreak.

 

But it’s not a biological constant; instead, it reflects the severity of the disease in a particular context, at a particular time, in a particular population.

 

The probability that someone dies from a disease doesn’t just dependent on the disease itself, but also on the treatment they receive, and on the patient’s own ability to recover from it.

 

This means that the CFR can decrease or increase over time, as responses change, and that it can vary by location and by the characteristics of the infected population, such as age, or sex. For instance, older populations would expect to see a higher CFR from COVID-19 than younger ones.

[arcube]

So...it looks like this guy held CDS and went on CNBC last week and had a meltdown about the crisis. Then unloaded the CDS Monday and went long stocks and back on CNBC (edit: Bloomberg on Tuesday) touting that everything is going to be ok. How is this remotely allowed/ethical?

People talk their book all the time. I don't see the issue with it.

 

Now if you made listening to it illegal it would go all away pretty quickly.  ;D

 

 

 

Yeah, people are only mad when people they don't like make money. At least he always said what he was doing, and nothing he said was incorrect, the best way to fight pandemics is a short but tight shutdown, followed by aggressive containment once you know that the shutdown has worked, rather than do a half-assed shutdown that leaves the disease growing exponentially on a daily basis for months and overwhelms and destroys a country's healthcare sector making mortality much worse. His thesis was that the country had to take things seriously and do shutdowns, so when he saw the signs that this was happening, it didn't make sense to stay hedged, no? The things he had CDSes on were probably already down like 80-90% by the time he got on TV, you think he's going to pretend to be worried in the hope of a few percents more? Or maybe Occam's razor is that he's really worried about his father and mass-scale avoidable suffering and about politicians not acting quickly enough in a situation where every day matters. People act as if Ackman's caused the 30% drop while in fact his impact was probably barely noticeable for a couple hours on one day.

 

Those who want to be angry at lack of transparency should look at Eric Trump telling people to go all-in on the stock market in early March (he has since deleted that Tweet), or at Trump's businesses and debts and assets that we still don't know much about, no tax records or transparency there, no idea what he and his family and his friends are buying or selling based on prior knowledge of policies and tweets and such. If someone's going to talk their book, I like to be able to look at that book, at least.

 

No one said he caused the 30% drop or endorsed Eric Trump's action (whatever he did). I don't care how much he makes or made, my point is that this guy is to be exposed for what he is..a guy who is always in some sort of manipulation trickery mode... My opinion, you don't have to agree but I did want to share with others and get it off my chest.

[Liberty]

No one said he caused the 30% drop or endorsed Eric Trump's action (whatever he did). I don't care how much he makes or made, my point is that this guy is to be exposed for what he is..a guy who is always in some sort of manipulation trickery mode... My opinion, you don't have to agree but I did want to share with others and get it off my chest.

 

So when Tepper does an interview and talks about being "balls to the walls", or "Druck" talks about what he's buying or about going short, or Buffett writes an op-ed about buying stocks or Malone talks about "how good a business X or Y is", is that manipulation trickery mode? Ackman just did what every guest on these shows do. His interview happened to be particularly dramatic because it was a particularly dramatic time, right as a pandemic is exploding but right before it seemed most governments were really taking it seriously and shutting things down.

 

If I had been given a microphone at that time, I'd probably have said pretty similar things, to be honest. That's what the data was showing, and I was worried about my parents and in laws and uncles and aunts and friends with health troubles and friends working in healthcare... I know there's strong social conventions about never going out on a limb and never appearing to overreact and all that, but those conventions hinder good decision-making in times like these, because we're all looking around and waiting for others to tell us it's time to do something, instead of thinking for ourselves, and lose precious time, so voices that actually tell you how bad it is and how bad it'll be if we don't act are very valuable.

[arcube]

No one said he caused the 30% drop or endorsed Eric Trump's action (whatever he did). I don't care how much he makes or made, my point is that this guy is to be exposed for what he is..a guy who is always in some sort of manipulation trickery mode... My opinion, you don't have to agree but I did want to share with others and get it off my chest.

 

So when Tepper does an interview and talks about being "balls to the walls", or "Druck" talks about what he's buying or about going short, or Buffett writes an op-ed about buying stocks or Malone talks about "how good a business X or Y is", is that manipulation trickery mode? Ackman just did what every guest on these shows do. His interview happened to be particularly dramatic because it was a particularly dramatic time, right as a pandemic is exploding but right before it seemed most governments were really taking it seriously and shutting things down.

 

If I had been given a microphone at that time, I'd probably have said pretty similar things, to be honest. That's what the data was showing, and I was worried about my parents and in laws and uncles and aunts and friends with health troubles and friends working in healthcare... I know there's strong social conventions about never going out on a limb and never appearing to overreact and all that, but those conventions hinder good decision-making in times like these, because we're all looking around and waiting for others to tell us it's time to do something instead of thinking for ourselves and lose precious time, so voices that actually tell you how bad it is and how bad it'll be if we don't act are very valuable.

 

Fair enough.

[Liberty]

3-min Ackman interview from March 23:

 

 

"At the time I made my remarks, none of the states were in a shelter-in-place mode.."

[John Hjorth]

... I shudder to think of the safety of our healthcare workforce in the coming months. ...

 

The real soldiers of today, almost everywhere around the world.

 

Ulf Hørlyk on LinkedIn. Mr. Hørlyk is managing doctor at the Acute Department in Horsens, Region Mid Jutland.

 

Each day he writes a post on LinkedIn about what's going on. It's an awesome war dairy. You can follow him [no need to connect] and use the translation feature to read his posts in your mother tongue.

 

- - - o 0 o - - -

 

Edit : Mr. Hørlyks last post today [Day 20] on LinkedIn was actually the last one on LinkedIn. [lol]. He has now moved away from the noise on LinkedIn to the blog called Akutfolket.dk. ["akutfolket" translates to "The Acute People"].

[Dalal.Holdings]

No one said he caused the 30% drop or endorsed Eric Trump's action (whatever he did). I don't care how much he makes or made, my point is that this guy is to be exposed for what he is..a guy who is always in some sort of manipulation trickery mode... My opinion, you don't have to agree but I did want to share with others and get it off my chest.

 

So when Tepper does an interview and talks about being "balls to the walls", or "Druck" talks about what he's buying or about going short, or Buffett writes an op-ed about buying stocks or Malone talks about "how good a business X or Y is", is that manipulation trickery mode? Ackman just did what every guest on these shows do. His interview happened to be particularly dramatic because it was a particularly dramatic time, right as a pandemic is exploding but right before it seemed most governments were really taking it seriously and shutting things down.

 

If I had been given a microphone at that time, I'd probably have said pretty similar things, to be honest. That's what the data was showing, and I was worried about my parents and in laws and uncles and aunts and friends with health troubles and friends working in healthcare... I know there's strong social conventions about never going out on a limb and never appearing to overreact and all that, but those conventions hinder good decision-making in times like these, because we're all looking around and waiting for others to tell us it's time to do something, instead of thinking for ourselves, and lose precious time, so voices that actually tell you how bad it is and how bad it'll be if we don't act are very valuable.

 

Uh, no the comparison to Buffett telling people "buy equities" in the fall of 2008 is not equivalent to this guy. Comparing a guy who has a long track record of shorting a business and then going onto a network to talk about how the business is a scam/fraud and he is doing it to "protect people" (reminds me of TSLAQ folks). And investing in a "sewer" (Munger's words) like VRX tells you even more.

 

The problem with the "if I had a microphone in my face" is that some people willingly go out of their way to seek out that microphone at opportune times. I guess it's great marketing for Pershing when it comes to raising capital. I have not seen Buffett/Munger engage in the same kind of tactics.

 

I'd bet a lot of money that a lot of people have tried to "put a microphone" in front of Buffett/Munger's faces during this crisis, but what you are not seeing is that they are declining to be interviewed. They are old & vulnerable and I am sure they are sitting on losses in airlines, but they see no need to go out and stir panic and cry on TV.

[ukvalueinvestment]

No one said he caused the 30% drop or endorsed Eric Trump's action (whatever he did). I don't care how much he makes or made, my point is that this guy is to be exposed for what he is..a guy who is always in some sort of manipulation trickery mode... My opinion, you don't have to agree but I did want to share with others and get it off my chest.

 

So when Tepper does an interview and talks about being "balls to the walls", or "Druck" talks about what he's buying or about going short, or Buffett writes an op-ed about buying stocks or Malone talks about "how good a business X or Y is", is that manipulation trickery mode? Ackman just did what every guest on these shows do. His interview happened to be particularly dramatic because it was a particularly dramatic time, right as a pandemic is exploding but right before it seemed most governments were really taking it seriously and shutting things down.

 

If I had been given a microphone at that time, I'd probably have said pretty similar things, to be honest. That's what the data was showing, and I was worried about my parents and in laws and uncles and aunts and friends with health troubles and friends working in healthcare... I know there's strong social conventions about never going out on a limb and never appearing to overreact and all that, but those conventions hinder good decision-making in times like these, because we're all looking around and waiting for others to tell us it's time to do something, instead of thinking for ourselves, and lose precious time, so voices that actually tell you how bad it is and how bad it'll be if we don't act are very valuable.

 

Uh, no the comparison to Buffett telling people "buy equities" in the fall of 2008 is not equivalent to this guy. Comparing a guy who has a long track record of shorting a business and then going onto a network to talk about how the business is a scam/fraud and he is doing it to "protect people" (reminds me of TSLAQ folks). And investing in a "sewer" (Munger's words) like VRX tells you even more.

 

The problem with the "if I had a microphone in my face" is that some people willingly go out of their way to seek out that microphone at opportune times. I guess it's great marketing for Pershing when it comes to raising capital. I have not seen Buffett/Munger engage in the same kind of tactics.

 

I'd bet a lot of money that a lot of people have tried to "put a microphone" in front of Buffett/Munger's faces during this crisis, but what you are not seeing is that they are declining to be interviewed. They are old & vulnerable and I am sure they are sitting on losses in airlines, but they see no need to go out and stir panic and cry on TV.

 

Everything he said needed to be said.  I agreed with it all.  And he has some credibility here, given he saw the effect before everyone else and positioned his portfolio accordingly - and was pretty transparent about it.  If Buffett did all that, we’d be praising his genius and societal contribution.

 

Ps ackman has done some scummy stuff in the past

[Dalal.Holdings]

No one said he caused the 30% drop or endorsed Eric Trump's action (whatever he did). I don't care how much he makes or made, my point is that this guy is to be exposed for what he is..a guy who is always in some sort of manipulation trickery mode... My opinion, you don't have to agree but I did want to share with others and get it off my chest.

 

So when Tepper does an interview and talks about being "balls to the walls", or "Druck" talks about what he's buying or about going short, or Buffett writes an op-ed about buying stocks or Malone talks about "how good a business X or Y is", is that manipulation trickery mode? Ackman just did what every guest on these shows do. His interview happened to be particularly dramatic because it was a particularly dramatic time, right as a pandemic is exploding but right before it seemed most governments were really taking it seriously and shutting things down.

 

If I had been given a microphone at that time, I'd probably have said pretty similar things, to be honest. That's what the data was showing, and I was worried about my parents and in laws and uncles and aunts and friends with health troubles and friends working in healthcare... I know there's strong social conventions about never going out on a limb and never appearing to overreact and all that, but those conventions hinder good decision-making in times like these, because we're all looking around and waiting for others to tell us it's time to do something, instead of thinking for ourselves, and lose precious time, so voices that actually tell you how bad it is and how bad it'll be if we don't act are very valuable.

 

Uh, no the comparison to Buffett telling people "buy equities" in the fall of 2008 is not equivalent to this guy. Comparing a guy who has a long track record of shorting a business and then going onto a network to talk about how the business is a scam/fraud and he is doing it to "protect people" (reminds me of TSLAQ folks). And investing in a "sewer" (Munger's words) like VRX tells you even more.

 

The problem with the "if I had a microphone in my face" is that some people willingly go out of their way to seek out that microphone at opportune times. I guess it's great marketing for Pershing when it comes to raising capital. I have not seen Buffett/Munger engage in the same kind of tactics.

 

I'd bet a lot of money that a lot of people have tried to "put a microphone" in front of Buffett/Munger's faces during this crisis, but what you are not seeing is that they are declining to be interviewed. They are old & vulnerable and I am sure they are sitting on losses in airlines, but they see no need to go out and stir panic and cry on TV.

 

Everything he said needed to be said.  I agreed with it all.  And he has some credibility here, given he saw the effect before everyone else and positioned his portfolio accordingly - and was pretty transparent about it.  If Buffett did all that, we’d be praising his genius and societal contribution.

 

Ps ackman has done some scummy stuff in the past

 

If that makes someone a genius, then I guess you'll be handing out a lot of genius awards to those on this forum/social media who "saw the effect before everyone else and positioned their portfolio accordingly" on here well before Bill went on TV on March 18th--in fact, even before he disclosed his position in CDS on March 3rd!

 

There are those who even saw this way back in January (Nassim Taleb for one), but they didn't need to talk about their equity or swap positions and they have been much more constructive on acts the government should take.

 

Not saying Bill is doing anything illegal, but Buffett does not engage in such tactics and the contrast is stark and apparent to me at least. It's the same with those funds that engage in shareholder activism (which Buffett eschews).

[Liberty]

Defending one thing that one person did doesn’t mean defending everything they ever did. seems pretty obvious to me, but I guess it needs to be said.

 

Shorting something and then telling people why it’s bad is just the exact reverse of going long some thing and then telling people why it’s good. It’s then up to the listener to make up their minds if your analysis makes sense and you have credibility. There are a good longs, and there are bad longs, and there are good shorts, and there are bad shorts. Lumping everybody together  by category doesn’t make sense.

 

In any case, he wasn’t even short, he was just hedged, which is what hedge funds are supposed to do.  Losses elsewhere and his portfolio compensated for the gain.

[Dalal.Holdings]

Defending one thing that one person did doesn’t mean defending everything they ever did. seems pretty obvious to me, but I guess it needs to be said.

 

Shorting something and then telling people why it’s bad is just the exact reverse of going long some thing and then telling people why it’s good. It’s then up to the listener to make up their minds if your analysis makes sense and you have credibility. There are a good longs, and there are bad longs, and there are good shorts, and there are bad shorts. Lumping everybody together  by category doesn’t make sense.

 

In any case, he wasn’t even short, he was just hedged, which is what hedge funds are supposed to do.  Losses elsewhere and his portfolio compensated for the gain.

 

Meh. I guess we'll agree to disagree. To me, shorting a company and trashing it != being long and praising a company. But that's just me.

[ERICOPOLY]

Given that Trump's business interests have been directly excluded from the bailout/stimulus, does that make him more or less likely to undermine social distancing?