LC

Littel PM, Brk, Cloudflare Sold 15% of Livenation that was purchased in the prior week.

Warren Buffett Abandons Traditional Investing to Become Full-Time Day Trader https://thestonkmarket.com/warren-buffett-abandons-traditional-investing-to-become-full-time-day-trader/

Likely not overcounted. NS is relying on excess mortality numbers but not adjusting downwards for traditional completeness estimates and not adjusting downwards (or upwards) for non-COVID death trends. The former is more important. Recent weekly reports of excess mortality are adjusted upwards for incompleteness, by determined by the %s of reports completed in a certain time t, compared to prior time t-1. This method assumes that excess COVID deaths are prevalent in all incomplete geographies equally - which is most likely not the case. Thanks, I know this is your area of expertise. These excess death numbers are not without issues either, but they serve as a good sanity check for the COVID-19 related death numbers . They revealed that the U.K. for example is undercounting (they admitted such pretty much), but Belgium (which has pretty bad looking numbers ) is over counting (since they count suspect cases as COVID-19 death). Honestly, the best guess at this point is to keep the baseline untouched (addressing Dalal's post) and attribute all excess deaths to the coronavirus. This gets us to around 65k US deaths through April 25. And my guess would be about 75k deaths to-date although I haven't looked at the recent week numbers or reports. Honestly I'm a bit burned out from all the coronavirus news, and thinking about the federal response is too disheartening.

From a financial systems point of view - this crisis has been managed very well. Powell is correct about that. People that dismiss all regulation should wonder where we would be now without 10 years of strict federal oversight and regulatory requirements on the large banks. And as another poster mentioned - capital returns to shareholders over that period have been very generous. My guess going forward: All banks probably do fine on the April stress tests. Further tests will be done with revised stress forecasts above the SA and BHC stress scenarios, and increased monitoring will also be performed over the banks's portfolios. Not sure how much more incremental capital will need to be raised but I assume capital team & FRB will make those decisions probably around July.

Cherzeca, it may be prudent to recall WB's advice. Temperament is more important than intelligence in investing.

Likely not under**counted. NS is relying on excess mortality numbers but not adjusting downwards for traditional completeness estimates and not adjusting downwards (or upwards) for non-COVID death trends. The former is more important. Recent weekly reports of excess mortality are adjusted upwards for incompleteness, by determined by the %s of reports completed in a certain time t, compared to prior time t-1. This method assumes that excess COVID deaths are prevalent in all incomplete geographies equally - which is most likely not the case.

Pretty good with finance and tech. I’m a statistician so stuff with a math heavy slant I can usually pick up.

Not to mention we're currently led by a corrupt idiot.

Thanks for posting, Liberty. Good article to summarize criticism of America's response. Trump has Made America the Greatest (victim of coronavirus)

Did a zoom wine tasting tonight, German non-rieslings. Pfeffingen, furst, and Koehler-ruprecht

What exactly did Trump's administration do here? The article you posted does not mention anything.

The definition of lying to some of the people all of the time. So trashy. Well, they can't fake the all-count deaths, at least (yet). Of which we have ~65,000 excess deaths, broken down by weeks ending: 3/28: +4,300 4/4: +12,900 4/11: +20,000 4/18: +17,500 4/25: +10,900

Greg - not sure, my personal uneducated guess is relation to international travel. One outlier that baffles me is Louisiana. Here you can check the weekly excess deaths per state, check out LA https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm#dashboard I know there is a large Asian community in LA particularly for the fishing industry but that could just be spurious reasoning.

Sold all the WFC I bought yesterday - will take any profits where I can get them to lower my cost basis on this one.

I agree some really good posters have reduced or eliminated their activity. However I was reading some old threads from 2011-2014 (or so) and was expecting the dialogue to be at a higher level - but actually I found it very similar to recent years. I was surprised to be seeing personal attacks, political bickering, faulty logic (your returns sucked last year, your analysis must be wrong!), etc. I think perhaps there is some nostalgia at play :D

alwaysdrawing - Thanks for the counterpoints.

Mephistopheles - this is exactly the questions I am asking myself. If his reason to sell is WFC-specific, what is it? He mentioned in an interview prior to the Annual mtg that he was still confident in the WFC brand. Now that is just the brand - it doesn't speak to the cost structure, the loan book, management, or anything else. As to whether it is WB selling - this is a pure guess, partially trying to think of the "wort case scenario. As JRM mentioned the 13F filed in Feb shows 323.2MM WFC shares help by Berkshire which is a reduction of 15%. Combine that with the excessive selling in the past month or so (compared to other banks) , and combined with WB's comments at the AGM, this is my less-than-educated guess.

Another question. Someone must be selling in large quantities. May be that WB is fully exiting the position?

It is interesting all the people buying WFC whereas WB was selling. (And WB may be fully exiting his WFC stake - if you recall during the annual meeting he mentioned "We don't trim positions") Makes me fear I am missing something big and obvious.

Sold out of MO, bought PM with proceeds. Bought a little WFC and cloudflare

Interesting thread, thanks again for posting.

In exactly what area is WFC "so far behind"? What systems don't they have? What talent do they not have access to? It's my impression that all the large banks (1) know what each other is doing in almost all things (2) have similar access to the same consultants and talent pool, and (3) have all seen digital trends coming a decade ago. I just don't know what JPM is doing so differently from WFC? It's also my impression that how the bank stocks trade is mostly related to the market's perception of its asset pool and major lines of business. WFC has a large consumer secured business in vulnerable geographies.

This would all make sense if the FRB actually behaved like a prudent, conservative 'lender of last resort' Rather than another of Trump's redheaded stepchildren with daddy's credit card. I agree with dcollon. The banks are all around 11% CET1 capital. What exactly is this capital buildup for if not to weather situations like this?

For that, randomized antibody testing studies would be better. I agree. Why isn't it happening?

Not to mention more accurate transmission rates and exposure rates which could potentially justify reopening “the economy”, rather than making less educated estimates.