Jurgis

Got a postcard in the postal mail today with "PRESIDENT TRUMP'S CORONAVIRUS GUIDELINES FOR AMERICA" (caps original, not mine). Good copy man.

On the days when market goes up things are "priced in". On the days when market goes down things are "not priced in".

This contradicts China data. If disease is highly contagious and impossible to contain, then there should be the same amount of deaths in all provinces rather than being superconcentrated in Wuhan. ... Not so contagious it is impossible to contain ... That's not what the OP's quote argues. I agree with you that virus was mostly contained in China. And I disagree with OP's quote and conclusions stemming from it.

This contradicts China data. If disease is highly contagious and impossible to contain, then there should be the same amount of deaths in all provinces rather than being superconcentrated in Wuhan.

If we had listened to Elon and established a colony on Mars, we would have a chance to survive!

I have a great business idea. http://www.waldeneffect.org/20120612solarcoolinghat.jpg Just point fans away from the hat and fans would blow away any viruses coming towards a person. This is insta profit. You can thank me later.

I'm not gonna look it up, but I'm pretty sure you could have done 100x by buying simple OOM puts before the market tanked. Mine didn't go up 100x. Purchased Aug. SPY 300 strike at the end of January and the max they were up was around 11x. I think if I'd gone much further out of the money you could have hit the 100x. I'm not even sure its possible to get 100x anymore on S&P puts due to the massive premium for volatility. Fair enough.

I'm not gonna look it up, but I'm pretty sure you could have done 100x by buying simple OOM puts before the market tanked.

LOL, it's kind of ridiculous, but also kind of true. Do you remember in late 2007/early 2008, when a bunch of people on this board were saying "all this crap is happening, and the market is barely reacting negatively. Are we insane, or do we just not get it?" Then in summer 2008, everything collapsed. This felt the same way in February--all this bizarre stuff was happening in the world, but the market remained high for no apparent reason. I could've put 5% percentage of my portfolio in VIX calls and doubled my portfolio. I wouldn't do more than 5%, because you don't need to, timing is hard, and I could be wrong. But it was really obvious from around mid-February that we were in trouble (basically, once containment failed and the virus started popping up all over outside China.) Yes, it was quite obvious. No, I did not sell/hedge/buy puts/etc. The portfolio is down XX%. Like Buffett says, I think I know who the patsy is. ::)

New rule: if the market's obviously going to crash because of a massive pandemic, sell everything, buy levered OOM puts, ... , profit, retire to an island with private jet and no viruses.

Not if you put it in a space ship and shoot it up there First company to send virus into space! Boldly going where no virus has gone before!

There are no viruses in space. Just sayin'

This thread has jumped the f%cking shark so high that it's the snakes on the plane all the way down. Please continue. Especially rb. If you survive man, a beer is on me.

Yeah, but there are new cases in Japan. Just few. So they have virus inside the island. And with very little testing going on it should be superspread. Unless they somehow are really lucky to get every single person early on.

Yeah, I'm talking to friend in Japan right now and it's super weird. They don't test. There is pretty much no social isolation. Trains are packed. Masks are used, but not by majority and even people using masks take them off, wipe face with hands, etc. It's just super weird that they don't have superspread.

Number of people dying of malaria is about 400.000 per year. Let's say we value these people's lives at a conservative 100K. So, say, we invest 40 billion a year in trying to save these people. According to the Bill Gates Foundations a 100 billion investment will eradicate the disease forever, so that's what, 2,5 years, and after that zero deaths forever. Atmittedly, a very poor back-of-the-napkin calculation, but so is everybody's virus math as well. And btw, those dying of malaria are mostly children. Those dying of this virus are mostly old people. If you re-do the math based on life expectancy the situation becomes even more ridiculous. But will we invest those kinds of money, or even a fraction? Nah, probably not. We don't see them dying, and those dying will never be us, so why bother. Not saying Trump is right with his "let's get back to work and fuck it"-attitude, but the hypocrisy about how much a life is worth gets to me sometimes. Yes, this is an issue.

More like a 50% reduction in now GSE assets would lead to 25% decline n book, no? Levered 7:1 and only 7% of the book is non-agency? There's ~12B of non-GSE assets and the book is ~14.6B. But sure not all non-GSE assets are the same.

I took a look at this. It is more complicated than Fannie/Freddie MBS. The "other" segment is pretty small, but it is significant because they are very levered. If there is a 50% haircut on the non-GSE assets, equity goes down 50% too. Relevant table "Financial condition" page 65 https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/1043219/000162828020001548/a2019nly10-k.htm It's quite possible that you all will make a killing assuming management can handle the "other" segment. I think it's too hard pile for me. Best.

Cherry trees are blooming in Tokyo. This is such a beautiful sight that Japanese are all flocking to the parks and saying "Sakuru social distancing!"

Would you really give up kissing just because of some virus?

insurance [inˈSHo͝orəns] NOUN Business that takes your money when you are doing fine and does not pay out when you are not.

I believe 198X ARs or financial data are still available either through KO website or through SEC.

There are couple issues with Markel vs BRK: - Markel's fully owned business part is much smaller and lower quality than BRK's. - With low/zero/negative interest rates, fixed income from (re)insurance is low and float is not worth a lot. - (Re)insurance has had weak pricing. This may change, but overall (re)insurance returns have been weak. Personally, I'd probably rather buy a stock portfolio via good mutual fund rather than buy MKL that's a stock portfolio + (re)insurance and fixed income. I'm not as positive on BRK as a lot of people are either. Like you said, the size is an issue. There are other issues (Buffett's age, conservatism, portfolio composition, etc.). I would not be surprised if BRK and MKL won't outperform the index long term coming out of the crisis. Disclosure: I hold BRK position. I have sold most of MKL position. I don't plan to buy MKL. I may add to BRK for the conservative side of my portfolio. I may be totally wrong about everything above.

For people who are saying that everyone should wear mask: where should people get these masks from? Masks are not available for purchasing over a month now. They were out of stock in February and the situation has not improved.

SD, I could not find info for all factories, but it seems that employees are being compensated during closure: https://www.dallasnews.com/business/autos/2020/03/19/arlington-general-motors-plant-will-close-for-deep-cleaning-until-march-30-halting-production/ So, although it's a big economic impact to companies, it is not yet a big impact on jobs. Clearly companies won't be able to keep paying employees if the factories are closed for extended period though. It is also not clear if other companies in the supply chain pay their workers during closures too.