Spekulatius

Here is a good visualization if current COVD-19 data. I found that the representation usually put forth by the states sucks, it these graphs show actually relevant numbers like - of positive as well as number of cases ( both are Important and need to be seen in context since More tests means more cases). Anyways, this has the total US numbers as well as the charts for each state: https://public.tableau.com/profile/peter.james.walker#!/vizhome/COVID-19SeeYourState/YourStateKeys

They are acutely aware of the impact of their words. Just as Buffett mentioned, just spelling out certain scenarios make it more likely it may happen. Or in this case, prevent them from even happening. He knows he can do a lot more and this is just his way of saying it. If you read up all the books that were written by the main players in the GFC, this thing comes up often. Vinod Right, but this looks like a dangerous game they’re playing if that was the intent. Saying “we can do a lot more, we’ve got a bazooka loaded and ready to fire” is one thing, saying “we have unlimited ammo” when they really don’t is another. They shouldn’t be risking their credibility like this IMO. Powell is playing poker with Mr Market and in some ways bluffing hoping he doesn’t have to show his cards. There is now a perception they the Fed can print aces in this game to now end without consequences and other players refusing to play.. The more he has to show his card and fire his bazooka the greater of a risk of misfire . I think one bad outcome we are seeing are these crazy bills that are now being drafted by politicians which assume that money isn’t an issue any more, no matter the sum. The 3T bill proposed now looks like Bernie’s wet dream. Absolutely crazy.

LOL. As if the Virus cares about Politics.

The market is forward looking and doesn’t give the tankers a multiple for what amounts to one ofF earnings. I actually think it’s rational. In addition, given the history of players, you are not going to see a lot of cold hard cash being paid out, even if they would make money for a longer period of time. Something like KNOP, which actually pays out a decent amount of cash, seems way more attractive.

Why EV/sales as a metric? Do you expect earnings/sales to falls? It’s not expensive on P/E (like most financials. ) Yes, margins are currently above average and using my price/ sales target would account for mean reversal.

TL;DR: SCOTT PELLEY, CBS NEWS / 60 MINUTES: There's only one question that anyone wants an answer to, and that is: when does the economy recover? JEROME POWELL, CHAIRMAN OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE: It's a good question. And very difficult to answer because it really does depend, to a large degree, on what happens with the coronavirus. Good interview with Powell. He is very plain spoken. We are in a shit storm. What government does Moving forward matters greatly and will impact the eventual outcome. Futures are up. I think TL; DR summary is that he said the Fed has more bullets.

Well, he doesn’t have to escape N.Y., He just has to move to a different building offering better infrastructure and/or a cheaper lease. Just threading such will give him better lease terms if he decides to stay. 2029 is a long time though, things could be substantially better or worse until then.

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).

One of the biggest risk in investing is knowing too much about too little, Imo.

Yes, PGR is a LT winner. They have increased their revenue growth going into property insurance (they used to do only car) and it’s not clear if they have the same advantage there. It’s trading a bit above its LT valuation baseline. I would buy it if I can get it below 1x EV/ sales.

Interesting perspective on cities and I think what this author postulates makes sense: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/coronavirus-will-not-harm-urbanization-cities-have-a-bright-future-professor-123312505.html

CINF is another P&C insurer that doesn’t have expect Virus exclusions in their contracts. Ever since they disclosed this on their CC, the stock has been weak. TRV has explicit Virus exclusion in most of their contracts according to their last CC. I recently bought some. CB also seems OK, but was a bit more Evasive. They have been good underwriters traditionally. Note that business interruption is Traditionally only meant to pay in case it prevents the business from operating due to property damage , but apparently they will get tested by some lawyers. It’s much more harder to argue for paying when it is explicitly excluded, so I think lawyers will go after those that don’t have the Virus exclusion.

COVID-19 death likely undercounted (Nate Silver): https://twitter.com/abcpolitics/status/1262026365907410949?s=21

Biergarten in Bavaria are opening up again. I have been to that on on the picture. https://www.br.de/nachrichten/deutschland-welt/biergaerten-oeffnen-wieder-corona-lockerungen-in-bayern-ab-montag,RyrdS5C Regulations differ from state to state, but the basic rules are the same. Interesting, my mom told me yesterday that cafe’s and restaurants in her town are opened up last week, but every customer one needs to leave a short form with address and contact information. Likely for contact tracing if any outbreak were to occur.

Here are the antibody numbers from some harder his neighborhoods in Boston. Roughly 10% have antibodies, 2.6% were COVID-19 positive. I thought the antibody numbers would be a bit higher by now - we did have higher numbers in Chelsea (~30% and they’d a few weeks back - Chelsea is hardest hit in MA). https://www.boston.com/news/coronavirus/2020/05/15/boston-coronavirus-antibody-testing-results Herd immunity certainly a long way off. Here in the boonies, 35 miles from Boston, we haven’t even started yet. MA is in no man’s land as far as the epidemic is concerned - no herd immunity in sight, but also case numbers aren’t coming down quick enough to do control the disease, if we open up. The leaky shelter in place that we are having doesn’t really get anywhere. There probably is no choice but open up, can’t be shut down forever. Governor Baker will announce his plans tomorrow.

That’s my thinking too. How effective the WFH work style depends heavily on the work force and the nature of the work. When you have a cohesive team they is used to work together, working from home may work quite well. If you have a lot of newer people that need coaching and training and high turnover workforce then it is probably not going to well. In either case, I can see a lot of benefits of meeting and working together in a centralized location from time to time. Personally, I could do 75% of my work well from home , but the remainder would be bit more iffy and at least less efficient.

CRE seems to be an Achilles heel of the financial system. The report mentioned low cap rates to start and now with COVID-19 the fundamentals have weakened substantially too. With a $20 trillion, the Fed May find It difficult to nail out the entire sector. We have seen the reaction of Public equity Reit already and it was swift and significant. If now the private market follows to the same extend, we will see a lot of naked bodies on the beach.

The first line Ebola treatment is an antibody treatment from Regeneron. It roughly halved the mortality. https://investor.regeneron.com/news-releases/news-release-details/new-england-journal-medicine-publishes-results-ebola-clinical There is a long way from preclinical to a treatment on the Market.

I am not sure which prison data you are referring to. Here are some samples https://www.inquirer.com/news/coronavirus-testing-montgomery-county-jail-asymptomatic-philadelphia-prisons-20200428.html Montgomery County’s jail tested every inmate for COVID-19 — and found 30 times more cases than previously known "171 of those positive inmates exhibited no symptoms at the time their tests were administered." They had 177 test positive of which 171 asympatomatic again confirming Stanford study that there are many asymptomatic cases. Its just that all countries test only with symptoms that we have high CFR. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/04/25/coronavirus-testing-prisons-reveals-hidden-asymptomatic-infections/3003307001/ Mass virus testing in state prisons reveals hidden asymptomatic infections; feds join effort More than 90% of the newly diagnosed inmates displayed no symptoms, https://www.axios.com/coronavirus-prisons-asymptomatic-8daaaa08-b53e-4368-adb7-88b7d93efece.html 96% of nearly 3,300 inmates with coronavirus were asymptomatic, survey shows https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-prisons-testing-in/in-four-u-s-state-prisons-nearly-3300-inmates-test-positive-for-coronavirus-96-without-symptoms-idUSKCN2270RX Of the 2,028 who tested positive, close to 95% had no symptoms. I can go on...but the primary conclusion of Stanford study that when we are calculating case fatality rate after testing mostly symptomatic suspected patients, we are missing a lot of asymptomatic infected carriers which would give much smaller IFR. The WHO said 3.5% CFR with low asymptomatic rate which would make 3.5% IFR. WHO still says there are very few asymptomatic covid infected and never updated the 3.5% CFR. So, the prison data infact does support Stanford findings. I am referring to Ohio prison data. Pundits mention that 95% were asymptotic (which means exactly what with prisoners), but they still have around a 1% fatality rate. So ~20% of the symptomic prisoners died.

Financial stability report from the Fed. It’s seems like the banks are Ok for now. Issues to worry about is commercial real estate and life insurers. I haven’t seen any report before indicating increased leverage and crappy assets with life insurers. interesting. https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/files/financial-stability-report-20200515.pdf

Despite Trump’s tweet asking for negative rates, it seems that the Fed itself is against them. both Powell and the head of the St Louis Fes strongly suggested such. In this case, I would go with what the Fed stated not Trump‘s tweet and that would actually take some tail risk for the banks off the table.

The Ohio Prison stats seem to indicate a mortality rate of 0.9% (4321 tested positive, 43 died), allürisoner tested apparently, so that a true rate. The Anti study (N=300) that inferred about 15% of the population had the virus inferred a 0.75% fatality rate. The recent Spanish antibody study estimates that 5% had COVID-19. so that’s 47M x0.05=2.35M infected and with 27.5k dead, that‘s a ~1.1% mortality rate. All those mortality rate are likely to go up because of the long tail of morbidity. The results vary of course but I think ~0.8% is a good estimate for the time being. Some countries are doing much better than which gives me hope. The 0.15% of the Stanford study is likely due to erroneous results skewed by false positives. https://www.physiciansweekly.com/spanish-antibody-study-points/

Interesting - these are vineyards (Pfalz?) not grape varieties. Earthy stuff from that area. I grew up surrounded by Rieslings vineyards. I could look at the Wehlener Sonnenuhr Rieslings vineyards from school. Good stuff and I can get it NH liquor stores. I like the Rieslings and other whites from the Finger lakes (upstate NY). They come closest to German wines, imo. There are some Canadian wines from Lake Okanagan area that are equally good, imo. I’d love to go back there. There is a town there that bears the name of our son.

In this, the expert article, also referring to the now famous church coir incident, He estimates that: ~50% transmission are due to aerosols , risk factors: closed areas with bad air circulation and many people on it, speaking and even worse singing 40% larger droplets 10% smear/touch So hand washing may not help that much. Mask helps some, but only N95 helps against aerosols. Staying and meeting other folks outside is probably best. The Church cases are intriguing. One infected person in a large room could infect 30 s with just one exposure. The fact that singing apparently lead to more aerosol emission is likely a contributing factor. This is all a bit speculative, but it does make sense. https://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/medizin/covid-19-belastete-troepfchen-machen-geschlossene-raeume-zu-infektionsherden-a-7522885d-7553-4acc-ac5d-ac603552ed06 https://www.erinbromage.com/post/the-risks-know-them-avoid-them

And BK and USB: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/36104/000120919120029062/xslF345X03/doc4a.xml