Investment BS Thread - Stocks/Futures/Mutual Funds/Bonds/Commodities/Options/ETFs/401ks/Etc

Early morning kick to my investing stones.

 

Powell owes me a lot of money from the damage his speeches have caused..

 

Well I added $1000 today to my long term holds. I’m a Rebel.

 

Buy

 

This stuff is orchestrated. I have no doubt about it. To what end, I'm not certain but someday we will know. It may be as simple as an experiment to see just how easily people can be manipulated. It's scary how easy it is. Create some fear and panic and you instantly make deputies out of half the population.

 

Yup, on local social media I see folks going apesht over what other people are choosing to do -- a recent online kerfuffle was over a photo of a restaurant's outdoor patio. Taken surreptitiously and from a distance - so it looked like folks were packed close together but the tables really were well separated from one another.

Yet everyone's gotta be a Hall Monitor.

 

I hope you're right and we do find out, but I am skeptical about that. The worldwide deaths of COVID-19 right now are about exactly half of worldwide deaths from the 2009 H1N1 pandemic. And with this one slowing down, I doubt it will get anywhere near H1N1. There was no lock down for that one, hmm...

 

Which of course begs the question of what things would've looked like without the lockdowns - would the number of people needing medical treatment have overwhelmed the medical systems and thereby jacked up the fatality rates?

Doubt we'll ever know - but Italy would make a good case study.

 

We can never know that. If you're going to look to Italy, make sure not to ignore Sweden though.

 

Throughout all of this, Georgia defined stores selling guns & ammo as Essential Services...

 

More like 0% and 100% for me

 

Certainly.

Be interesting to factor in lifestyle differences in February/March weather in the two nations, as well as any cultural differences in needing to be told (enforce) to do the smart thing, as well as of course medical capacity. I understand Italy has issues with normal flu seasons as well, suggesting other endemic issues.

Don't misunderstand - not "claiming" anything here - just that the differences in how this played out in different places would be an interesting study of finding causal factors.

 

I actually find it all very interesting too. The things you mentioned (along with many other factors) all play into this.

I just hope the U.S. doesn't try to look at China and their "only" 3k deaths to justify welding us into our houses during the next pandemic!

 

bought some QQQ and thinking to pick up some VTI...

got out of BA almost a month ago having ridden it up to 151, have been pondering a jump back in but the past month trend isn't promising.

 

I wish Sweden was a good case study, but it just isn’t. My sister moved there last year temporarily for work, and said a lot of it is very quiet. They have better healthcare, people are keeping their distance, many working from home. Doing a lot of what we are doing but the government didn’t have to force it. And their death toll is far greater than their neighbors. Mostly in old folk homes. Italy isn’t a test case either. Demographics and health conditions. In the end whatever happens happens, and I don’t think we will have any good answers on what the “best” approach is. I will say the US seems to have more interest in reporting deaths than China or Russia. And if I had to trust any stats they’d be the ones out of Sweden. They don’t claim victory, admit they have more deaths than they thought, and best of all, they stick to A plan instead of trying to please everyone

 

The other big factor is testing rates. I work with a number of folks in India so I see some of their stats posted and it'd seem like India is doing pretty good with their lockdown -- but the per-capita testing rates are really low, so any case rate figures are highly suspect.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104645/covid19-testing-rate-select-countries-worldwide/

 

Oh my gosh this is painful. Tanking hard today. I wish I had some more free cash flow to send in

 

My powder is still dry and waiting. I'm pissed that I missed DKNG at $26.50 this morning, but I was briefing a conference call from data on my desktop.

Such a rookie move...