Jurgis

Not shhughes1116, but hey here's my 0.02. Personally, I separate good managers and good leaders. Good managers are the ones who take care of the team. It's all cliche, but they are the ones who care that team members get responsibilities according to their strengths and weaknesses. And at the same time encourage team members to improve their weak sides. And care about team member personal and professional growth. Interface the team with higher management and other teams. Deal with politics. Build team spirit and camaraderie. Make sure the team is valued. Makes sure the team gets adequate support and renumeration. Good leaders are much less common. For me a good leader is someone who directs the team into new high value and/or high growth directions as they appear or even before they appear. It is someone who notices trends before others and gets the team positioned accordingly. Ideally it's Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, but it doesn't have to be someone who produces iPhone. The leadership could be something less groundbreaking. It could be someone who first notices move to cloud computing and pushes company's product to be rewritten as SaaS on AWS. It could be someone like Munger who pushes Buffett to switch to moaty businesses. (Buffett himself is a leader in certain aspects too). It could be someone who noticed that ETFs are coming and converted mutual fund shop to ETF shop. Or just positioned the team inside the organization accordingly. Some people would call a person a leader even when that person focuses on existing strengths or focus areas and never changes direction. E.g. someone who gets a management role in a company known for frugality and keeps the team focused on saving every cent in product costs. Or someone who leads a team that produces a great software package and keeps that project steady on track. I personally don't consider such people leaders. IMO they are managers - without any negative connotation attached to that term. Of course, in the real world there are shades of grey . Most great managers have to show some leadership if they stay managers for a long time. They cannot stay at the same place or their team would become irrelevant. Converse is true less often: leaders can be lousy managers or not managers at all. I mostly agree with shhughes1116 that good manager can deal with distributed team. IMO it's not as easy as dealing with co-located team though. Personal interaction matters, shared activities in office matter. Remote manager loses a number of tools that help and faces higher hurdles to do best for the team.

True dat.

Is Barry the first dude on work-from-home videos with multimillion dollar paintings in his house? (I assume these are not just random trash copies lol).

Complement to Cobafdek, in the middle of the (tribal) fight. Your question is difficult to answer (it feels like: What's the risk of shorting Tesla stock?) and it includes the evaluation of tail risk. Since my background has some relevance and since i need to address this question now, here's a tentative answer. It seems that the opening will be gradual and the rate of opening will be inversely proportional to virus resurgence. So you'll need to adjust your risk management for your area and with the evolving picture. I work with a scenario of localized and limited resurgence activity during the opening with no second or third wave although this could become low-grade seasonal. I'd say testing will be useful for certain areas of concern but it's hard to see how testing at large will be useful for local decisions. I would also add that herd immunity is not a black or white concept. Relative herd immunity may be much lower than the often 60-70% quoted. 1st risk: risk that you become a spreader without being sick This is a population-level risk but also an individual risk as you may bring the disease to loved ones who may be susceptible (known risk factors or even rarely idiosyncratic). Then, your cumulative (i share DocSnowball's realism about molecules and timeline) individual risk is likely lowish (and will evolve over a fairly long time), especially if you take basic precautions (basic distance, washing hands, and avoiding social contacts with older (or frail) friends or family members). The concept of position sizing (extent of your social participation along the activity risk spectrum you describe) could be applied as a degree of conviction that your area is safe (from publicly announced statistics, hospital activity level etc). 2nd risk: risk that you become significantly sick Apart from idiosyncratic risk, which is very low, your risk will be proportional to risk factors (age, lung disease, obesity, diabetes etc) with individual risk factors being likely more than additive and serious event risk going up exponentially with the overall level of frailty. Assuming not super vulnerable means no major risk factors, it seems that your risk of becoming significantly sick is very low (do your own work :) ). What you do as an individual is also tied to your risk personality. If you used to go for the flu vaccine every year versus not even worrying about becoming sick will have an influence on future behavior vs CV. It's possible CV becomes old news very rapidly especially if other events take eyeballs off the bug (and its consequences). @Jurgis: personally I wait for one incubation period to start to trust the data - cases in your state have gone down and stayed down for 14 days; and for two incubation periods for giving the all clear - cases are in single digits or zero in your state for 28 days. Try to phase your return back towards activities in that way. The most essential activities come first, and the lowest risk will be where you're not within 3-6 feet of others and are outdoors. The highest risk will be going to healthcare facilities and crowded indoor gatherings. One thing I've learned is this virus is 2 SD beyond what I've expected of it in spreading, so better to be safe than sorry. The fact that it spreads so easily in healthcare facilities (10k healthcare workers infected in the US!!! cities with public transport really hit hard) tells me there is effective transmission beyond droplets, perhaps it lives well on surfaces + asymptomatic/presymptomatic people spread it early on...(you fill in your thoughts) Maybe a smart idea to build a checklist of do's and don't to follow before, during and after going out and test-drive/refine it when you start going out. I'll try to get it started. Is this activity essential? What is the risk in this activity? How can it be substituted or minimized? Hand sanitizer - check. Wipes - check. Mask - check. Keeping social distance, minimizing touches, minimizing time spent/risk incurred in the activity Sanitize when done, dispose mask and take footwear off safely on return Hand washing when home Dispose clothes for washing later, hand washing again These are good suggestions. Thanks.

Works for farmers, so why not! ::)

Can you elaborate? Do you mean not travel in the same car, plane? Sleep in separate houses during pandemic? Just curious. 8)

I'm trying to ask this uncontroversially mostly medical professionals here: assuming a gradual relaxation of the lockdown with no vaccine, no treatment, and no (or minimal) testing/tracking. Would you say going out is acceptable or too risky? Let's assume a medium-high risk state like MA. Let's assume not super vulnerable person. If we want to talk concrete "going out" categories, let's say going to parks, general shopping, meeting friends/family, going to office/work, going to a restaurant (I tried to order this from least risk to most risk). Outcome of "severe" infection sounds very scary. That has to be balanced with infection risks though. I know this is a bit theoretical and uncertain, but since there's a talk of "relaxation" even in NY state, maybe this could be useful. I could open a new topic... but probably not worth it. Thanks

Didn't they get a note to use bitcoin?

:o I think you did not market that well. I'd join. I'd even pay $$$. Reminds me of that all-nude sauna/pool/etc. complex I went to in Germany years ago. Ohlialia. 8) True story dat.

Tilson's cumulative return is ~8.4% annual. Let's call it 8.5%. So you deposit $1M into escrow. A contender sets up $50K account in which they invest as they like. If they outperform 8.5% annual in 5 years, the $1M is paid out to that person. Agreements/etc. are all public. Sounds right? And this is open to anyone on CoBF who contacts you with a contract. Well, maybe to first 10 comers just in case there's too much interest.

Right. Empty promises from anonymous guy on the Internetz. You should work on your selling grasshopper. Maybe read more Whitney Tilson manual.

It's a deal. You deposit $1M into escrow account at reliable mutually-agreed custodian. We write up a contract. All documents to be public and published on CoBF.

"for life" .... or until I shut down this newsletter and start another something...

This practice is spreading hugely: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/covid-19-checkpoints-targeting-out-of-state-residents-draw-complaints-and-legal-scrutiny/2020/04/14/3fc0ed42-774e-11ea-b6ff-597f170df8f8_story.html No-longer-United States of America. And people expect a "reopen" soon? LOLZ.

Quicken Willmaker https://www.amazon.com/Quicken-Willmaker-Trust-2020-Software/dp/1413326978 I've used the past version years ago. However, I have really no clue about how to choose executor, guardian, etc. I did all the "wrong" things: spouse is executor and if spouse does not survive, then X relative. SD might be right that bank/lawyers are best as executors, but hey then you pay the fees. The will I created has clearly not been used (LOL). So no clue what gotchas are there. BTW, also most of my stuff is JTWROS with spouse, so that's a good thing if only one of us dies. And retirement accounts go outside the will. If you count JTWROS and retirement accounts, that leaves very little. So the will is mainly if I and my spouse both die at the same time. In which case, crap hits the fan. OTOH, my situation is rather simple. And I don't care that much what happens when I'm dead. ;D So FWIW ::)

Makes total sense! TINA! YOLO!

He's alive!

Herr Dicktator is pure Cialdini genius. Buying votes legally.

Maybe not enough to move the needle, but pharmcists have been given the ability to order and adminster COVID-19 tests. https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/authorizing-licensed-pharmacists-to-order-and-administer-covid-19-tests.pdf Seems like a good way for Walgreens and CVS to drive some business. Walgreens seems very well set up to be a retailer that thrives during the current situation. They already have many drive through locations and mail order available. We've been buying more stuff (front of store) from our local pharmacy lately. It has a wide assortment, and is smaller and not busy, so seems safer. If they start offering covid tests there I'll stop going completely. What if they offer drive-through tests?

I've had my eye on this. But trading volume is so low, I wonder how "real" the price is. Up 17% today on no news. Maybe it's "Up 17% today on a post on CoBF" ;)

Thanks. I guess people reactions and behavior vary by country/location a lot. E.g. what I hear from Lithuania is closer to what you wrote about Poland vs what I hear from Germany and Austria.

The dissolution during a market drop/pandemic is quite unfortunate. Even with all the effort I'd guess it's hard to make decisions what positions to keep/sell/buy when dissolution is going to happen in short term. There's likely losses and opportunity losses due to this situation. I can see "sleepless nights" there. :( Tough luck. Best wishes to all involved.

On the side of "pent up demand and V-shape recovery", what I hear from Germany and Austria people are going out a lot and not taking the social isolation precautions very seriously. This might be true in other locations too. So perhaps even without vaccine/treatment there will be a (large?) proportion of the population who will go out shopping/travelling/eating-out once forceful restrictions are lifted. Although there still remains the question whether this will lead to big reinfection flare-ups. Personally, I don't plan to go out much even if restrictions are lifted if treatment/vaccine is not available. OTOH, I am currently going out more than a bunch of US people, who only go out to grocery store once a month. So clearly it's all very anecdotal.

It's more that low income people are f&*cked ... again. John Oliver Coronavirus IV Haven't watched this yet. As I get older, I get more cynical and realize that people can make careers out of telling people that they are the oppressed. I wonder what these celebrities are like in person. The question is "Do the guy broadcasting to millions about structural unfairness eat caviar?" So in your opinion the fact that a guy on TV (or a person on CoBF) is rich means that they cannot talk about the issues faced by poor people? You realize that this would remove yet another way for poor people issues to be heard? Let's sweep them under the rug, yeah? You already sit here in the CoBF echo chamber of rich and entitled self-made people who mostly assume that being poor comes from being dumb or making bad choices and "everyone could be rich if they only applied themselves". Perhaps it's not such a bad thing that there are people who show the real situation.

Herr Dictator announced: "The beatings will continue until morale improves."