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

We can argue that all we want (and surprise - I share your sentiment). That has literally no bearing on what I’m saying though.

The reality is - This “cold virus that will be gone very soon” shut down our entire economy (for reasons that again, I’m not trying to debate). I’m just stating facts. To play this off like it didn’t have a very very real effect on our economy/world is disingenuous. Once the ball gets rolling, it’s hard to get it to stop.

Do you think those in power are going to see this demonstration on how they can pull strings and say “no no, it was just this one time... we should never control people like this again”? If you do, I have some Hertz stock to sell ya!

 

I know what you're saying. My original post was about a CEO who said it would change travel forever. That was what I disagreed with. Are we still impacted by the Spanish Flu (which killed 50 million)? That was 100 years ago. I am just saying, in a few years, there will be a new pandemic. Then another, then another. People like the CEO I originally posted about seem to panic irrationally, that's all I was saying. Travel will go back to normal very soon.

 

Travel will go back to normal rates (if not increased rates) very soon, yes. That's not what we're discussing. As far as the Spanish Flu, yes that was 100 years ago. We didn't have the anywhere close to the world travel or even state travel that we do today. There is a massive difference between 100 years ago and today.

Here's what I see - "Experts" are going to see this as a wake up call. There will be a push to prevent something like this from ever happening again. Cruiselines and air lines (the ones that survive) will put in place safeguards to try to prevent this from happening again. There will be something substantially different in the way we travel and it will be made as less invasive as possible, just like 9/11 completely changed air travel. My money is on a new agency (because we all know how much we love that) that is in charge of preventing the spread of infectious diseases (or the CDC will have another little branch). They'll put in place regulations that companies must follow. We will get new body scanners that take our temperature; if we have a fever, we can't travel or go on our cruise.

 

Eh, he's right - it won't be the same for a while. Hell, maybe ever. I think this will absolutely kill business travel, suddenly you can have a zoom meeting in 5 minutes rather than a face to face a week away with travel + hotel + meals? Hell nah, big boy CEO is going to tell his sales team "Zoom it up" and save them a boatload. I do think we won't recover to pre-virus because of that. Maybe in time we will because more vacations, but there will now absolutely be not near as much business travel and it won't come back.

Ever been to some of the rinky dink airports? The effectiveness of their security measures leaves me thinking this method of a temperature scan probably won't be implemented. Plus, what would they do? You can't get on a flight for 14 days, now you're trapped wherever you are? What if it's an international layover, too? So I go on vacation and need to get home, let's say my wife and I are both sick, now:

1. Dog?
2. House?
3. Kids (if we had any)?
4. Work?

etc etc. I don't foresee them saying "You shall be scanned and will not be allowed on a flight if you show any symptoms".

This is a virus we lucked out on with its severity, if it was a COVID-19 level transmission with SARS/MERS severity, we'd be up shit creek and that's what scared everyone at the start.



I think the only long-term industry this will affect is buffets.

 

Yes I have been to those type airports before. They changed after 9/11 as well. I'm not arguing their effectiveness; I'm pointing out that air travel changed as we know it.

 

I am probably not making my point very clear, because this is the internet and it doesn't always come through well. I think you're interpreting what I am saying in a very narrow way (i.e. Spanish Flu and air travel). That's not what I meant at all. I just meant that in more broad terms, this virus will be forgotten very soon, just like everything else. We'll be panicking about some new crisis in a few months. Maybe a new virus? A new war? Who knows. This will be old news soon though.

 

Oh, I've had that viewpoint since the start too. I completely agree that this is the new SARS, West Nile, Ebola, H1N1, Bird Flu, whatever. It will be forgotten but this is the first one of these that has had this type of effect on the world/country in modern times. Changes will be implemented and they won't be going away IMO.

 

I agree and disagree. This will, as a cultural thing, be washed soon. Especially if a vaccine comes out, I think we'll hear a lot of stories long term about "the lockdown days"

BUT. It will have long lasting effects in some weird ways. I think we'll see wearing masks when sick as a normal thing now, why not? One thing I know we'll see is an industrial movement for a global supply chain. Hey, all of my steel manufacturers are in China. Or, hey, all of my machine houses are in Springfield, USA. Well, what happens if China gets locked down for some reason (or conflict, etc). What happens if an earthquake levels Springfield, USA. Suddenly, as a company, I have no supply chain. In Aerospace, this means vetting new suppliers, getting them approved by customers, etc. all while the customer is banging on the door demanding to know why their shipment is late and when they'll get it, and what we're doing to make sure it doesn't happen again. This is already happening, the big dogs are rolling out Thou Shalt's of supply chain risk mitigation as a result of this. This will absolutely be a history-book level thing and people will study it in several industries and disciplines.

As a joe-schmo homeowner vacationer, though? Give it a few years. I never liked cruises anyway, but yeah it'll be back. I do feel bad for the people who decided to retire to cruise ships though!

 

This is a very very good point

 

That's a good way to put it. This is the first "social media" virus too, and to me that's what's causing a lot of the freaking out. I mean, H1N1 killed 575,000+ worldwide (over 100k more than this one so far), but I don't even remember that one existing. Interesting times...

 

Yea H1N1 was around with facebook but that was when facebook was limited to college kids or academia or whatever. I remember this because I actually got H1N1 when I was in college and I vividly remember complaining about it on facebook lmao. "They" were trying to fearmonger H1N1 at the time but most people didn't give af.
Edit - Didn't finish my thought and so it looks like I'm disagreeing with you lmao. I meant to say that there wasn't even a fraction of the social media that there was today, so you're right...it was completely different.

 

This is a bold take, and possibly wrong, but worth contemplating: would we even know COVID-19 existed without the media? Hmm...

 

Just imagine how many other ones we've lived through. We're SURVIVORS!

 

We need a ribbon.

 

Ill let you know how my flight is to clearwater beach in florida.... im with boyk1182, I thought the virus was gone when the news was covering riots... I guess those died down now we need non stop coverage of a 2nd wave. Im over it business as usual.

 

Just wait 2 weeks! That’s the fear mongering slogan.

 

H1N1 didn’t kill many in the US, so we probably didn’t care. And I believe that 575k number is in the high end of the estimates. I don’t know why we have to keep downplaying Covid 19. It will be worse than anything in recent memory. You can’t compare death rates and infections with something from
100 years ago, for all we know, if that happened in current times it would be like any other flu. All we know is covid 19 has and is killing people, we will never have an accurate count of how many. Also, we didn’t succeed in locking it down like many other countries did, and there’s nothing more to do but to carry on. It will be gone at some point, and life as we know it won’t really be changed at all. We will respond in a different way and might even have a plan in place if another pandemic appears in the future. Other than that, I don’t see travel or daily life being altered 3 years from now

 

I agree with most of what you said. My theory (that would be widely disputed, but it would be impossible to prove either way), is that 100k+ have died in the U.S. "with" COVID-19, but maybe a few thousand at the most died "because of" COVID-19. I see it as political on every level.

 

Tomorrow marks the three month anniversary of the lowest local stock plunge. Use that as you wish.

 

During H1N1, we didn't send a bunch of virus cases into nursing homes...