Dr. Robert Redfield, the Director of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said,
…the numbers are going to be much, much, much lower than would have been predicted by the models.
This statement last night just hours after the Trump virus team were predicting horrific numbers of dead from complications from the CCP CoronaVirus, from 100,000 to as many as 240,000 dead. What is the new number? I guess we’ll just have to wait and see, but “much, much, much lower” has got to be good, right?
What caused this abrupt turn around in mortality forecasting in the United States? Apparently is was all due to our exceptional compliance with isolation and social distancing. It actually worked. Or was this just a dress rehearsal?
The market certainly likes the news, despite the fact that most companies are shutdown, except for “essential” services, the stock market is up, and surging!
People are still sitting at home, everything is closed, go flow of money, at least 17 million newly unemployed people…by all accounts the worst financial disaster in United States history, and the market is surging…holy crap!
We’re all still on lockdown, New York City recorded the most deaths in a single day yesterday, and we haven’t yet peaked. At least that was the story this past weekend. By all accounts we were at least two weeks from peaking, maybe even four. Has this all changed now?
It looks like testing is really ramping up, and not just for sick people, but for everyone. It’s really the only way to test to see who has the antibodies, and therefore immunity. It takes approximately 70 percent of people with antibodies to exhibit herd immunity, which means people can return to some for of normal, the new normal if you will.
The President wants America back to work as soon as possible, but he also doesn’t want to put people at risk of this deadly disease. His job is to instill some level of hope and optimism in people, that will make the process of going back to work, and interacting with other people much easier.
From an investor’s point of view, is this the time to go long?
I don’t think so. People are still in lock down, and will likely be in lock down for another couple weeks. Every day puts tremendous strain on the economy. Bills aren’t getting paid, mortgages and banks are reeling. Some people live paycheck to paycheck and are still waiting for their stimulus check just so they can get some food and pay for essential bills.
The government will have to institute at least one, maybe two more rounds of stimulus, to get us over this huge chasm. The Federal Reserve will have to do something to bail out the banks and mortgage holders. No one has figured all this out yet, or at least hasn’t communicated it to the American people. It will come, but the pain is mounting, and something is going to crack.
At the Asymmetric Advisor we are still mostly cash, our portfolio already has about 20 percent gold, and the rest cash. We have a 1st tranche position in Gold Standard Ventures (GSV), and are waiting for this market to reveal itself. The Volatility Index (VIX) is still simply too high to trade anything in this market.
