Liberty

I haven't thought about this company much in many years, but it's trading at where it was a decade ago.. things certainly don't seem to be going well. DOn't know what's going on, but quick scan of the financials shows quite a big FCF reversal lately, with margins melting a bit.

That's one among many many others.

(On school closures)

https://www.france24.com/en/20200303-kremlin-critic-navalny-says-bank-accounts-frozen

34m market cap, 420m entreprise value, 1.2bn "equity" on the books (mostly PP&E purchased way higher). Happy micro-cap investing...

Probably only partly. A lot of people will buy stuff there because it's bulk, but normally they might have bought it elsewhere closer to them in smaller amounts (Walmart, etc). Yea, that’s a fair point. I still think 10% is likely more short-term noise than would be justified by a DCF of the actual impact in long-term cash flows. Yeah, anything based on what's happening now would be an opportunistic trade.

*sigh* I'm in the camp of what I explained. I'm in the camp that it's not a genie, it's a virus, and the public health reaction makes a difference to how many people die or get really sick once all is said and done, as I've explained previously. There are many factors that cause this, and I don't feel like re-writing them all every time. "If we reduce the spread, even if we ultimately have the same total number of cases, we 'flatten the curve,' which means that, at any given time, our health care system can cope with the COVID-19 cases, hopefully. USA has lower hospital capacity (2.9 beds/1,000 people) than China (4.2), Australia (3.8 ), Italy (3.4), Japan (13.4), & Korea (11.5). Reports indicate COVID-19 epidemic filled the hospitals in Wuhan and Milan regions Another advantage of 'flattening the curve' of the COVID-19 epidemic by implementing social distancing now is that more of the cases that ultimately occur will occur at a (later) time point when (perhaps!) a vaccine or better treatment is available" "The US is somehow still unable to do large scale coronavirus testing. "The incompetence has really exceeded what anyone would expect with the CDC,” said Dr Michael Mina, an epidemiologist at Harvard. “This is not a difficult problem to solve." China has tested millions of people, South Korea testing 10,000 a day. US has tested *hundreds*. "China had five commercial tests on the market 1 month ago and can now do up to 1.6 million tests a week; South Korea has tested 65,000 people so far. The U. S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in contrast, has done only 459 tests""

Probably only partly. A lot of people will buy stuff there because it's bulk, but normally they might have bought it elsewhere closer to them in smaller amounts (Walmart, etc).

Thread about someone with symptoms and high-risk situation trying to get tested in Seattle:

Atrocious. I'm not sure that I quite understand the fixation on having "correct" and up to date statistics. What would governments in the US do differently if they had "good" statistics resulting from more prevalent testing? So, suppose that there was more testing being done of people who sought medical attention for respiratory disorders and it came back that there were 1,000 positive Covid-19 cases. If that were true, how many cases would there be that had not sought medical attention because the symptoms were not so severe? Perhaps it would be 1,000 more that wouldn't show up in the official statistics? And then what would the US government do with those numbers? Look, either this virus can be controlled and we can put the genie back in the bottle, or it cannot be controlled and the genie is on the loose. If you are in the camp that this thing has already spread so much that the world has lost control of it, then "good" statistics don't strike me as too useful. If you are not going to impose mandatory quarantines and if you are not going to suspend international travel, what are the remaining levers that governments can pull and how are better statistics actually useful? I guess that I'm in the camp that the genie is out of the bottle and that it's time to focus on managing a situation which is no longer preventable. But, maybe I'm alone in that camp? SJ It makes a huge difference. Investors are supposed to understand exponential growth, right? This means that time matters a lot and early interventions in the right places, in the right ways, giving correct info to population so they can act in the right way, etc, can have a tremendous impact on the rate at which things unfold. Since healthcare system capability isn't built for huge peaks, these delays can help it absorb increases much better and will result in saved lives. Also, vaccines and other drugs are being tested and developed, and delays help get more people across that line. In short, bungling the public health response will cost lives, could be your grand-parents or some friend who has a weaker immune system because they survived cancer or have asthma or whatever. Ironically doesn’t seem like too many people understand significance of exponential growth on a value investing site. So the greatest country on earth with the *greatest healthcare system* had a huge headstart on tackling this and bungled it up, far worse management than Canada or Europe and people on here asking “so what”. Lol. The only good thing this admin did was cutting off travel with China early which helped us have a delay in cases. Everything else was botched. What is "everything else"? Testing? That's not doing anything but delaying the exponential growth by maybe a month or two. If you have 1 individual who test positive and you quarantine 100 individuals believed to have come in contact with that person. You still have another 1000 (probably more) individuals who may have been exposed by the 100 during the 14 day incubation period. It's futile...If you miss a single infected individual it's already too late. The ONLY thing testing is good for at this point is alerting individuals that COVID-19 is in their immediate area. And by then you're likely 14 days too late... By your standards the best thing that could have possibly been done was on day 1 of COVID-19 being discovered is go into full nationwide quarantine. And that would likely be ineffective as well due to the long incubation period. This isn't the first epidemic in human history, right? Some have been handled better than others, there are things to do, they make a difference to rate of progression and at what level things get contained and how many people die. It's not binary. The "well, it's all pointless, just throw your hands in the air and do nothing" approach clearly isn't the best.

Atrocious. I'm not sure that I quite understand the fixation on having "correct" and up to date statistics. What would governments in the US do differently if they had "good" statistics resulting from more prevalent testing? So, suppose that there was more testing being done of people who sought medical attention for respiratory disorders and it came back that there were 1,000 positive Covid-19 cases. If that were true, how many cases would there be that had not sought medical attention because the symptoms were not so severe? Perhaps it would be 1,000 more that wouldn't show up in the official statistics? And then what would the US government do with those numbers? Look, either this virus can be controlled and we can put the genie back in the bottle, or it cannot be controlled and the genie is on the loose. If you are in the camp that this thing has already spread so much that the world has lost control of it, then "good" statistics don't strike me as too useful. If you are not going to impose mandatory quarantines and if you are not going to suspend international travel, what are the remaining levers that governments can pull and how are better statistics actually useful? I guess that I'm in the camp that the genie is out of the bottle and that it's time to focus on managing a situation which is no longer preventable. But, maybe I'm alone in that camp? SJ It makes a huge difference. Investors are supposed to understand exponential growth, right? This means that time matters a lot and early interventions in the right places, in the right ways, giving correct info to population and medical staff so they can act in the right way, etc, can have a tremendous impact on the rate at which things unfold. Since healthcare system capability isn't built for huge peaks, these delays can help it absorb increases much better and will result in saved lives. Also, vaccines and other drugs are being tested and developed, and delays help get more people across that line. In short, bungling the public health response will cost lives, could be your grand-parents or some friend who has a weaker immune system because they survived cancer or have asthma or whatever.

New ones in Autralia by Vela: https://velasoftwaregroup.com/vela-software-acquires-foresiight/ Also: https://interica.com/petrosys-announces-acquisition-of-interica/ h/t @pearnick

https://www.fastcompany.com/90470219/project-lightspeed-how-facebook-shrunk-messenger-down-by-75

"What Actually Happens If You Get Coronavirus?" by AsapScience Found via @tobi

https://www.theinformation.com/articles/aws-plans-to-double-size-of-sales-team-as-microsoft-looms

I'm not really thinking about things this short term, but if I did, seems to me like Costco is a good bet. If things get worse, everybody will go there to stock up, and if things go better than expected, the stock should recover.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYTQI2DvAfo Prof. Marcel Salathé (GHI, SV) on Coronavirus

Interesting perspective:

AGM is official for May 8: https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2020/02/28/1992984/0/en/Constellation-Software-Inc-Announces-Annual-General-Meeting.html Update: New acquisition at Vela: https://www.quadient.com/news/Quadient-announces-the-sale-of-ProShip "a leader in enterprise parcel shipping solutions" Selling price: USD 15 million "ProShip has about 100 employees" h/t @pearnick

If that's not a forum-banning offense, I don't know what is. I'm not even sure why this was said (I looked through and didn't really see anything harsh to get that kind of response) but yeah, that's not good. He's been insulting people without provocation in a few threads lately, but this is way beyond the pale... don't know what's going on ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

If that's not a forum-banning offense, I don't know what is.

Too early to tell with precision, but I wonder what the impact of China’s high air pollution levels and high smoking levels (esp. men) have on complication probability for a pulmonary disease, and whether places without those negative cofactors can do significantly better.