This won't be useful to anyone for any purpose whatsoever but: not only do I not know where the market will go nor what to do about my various positions, commitments, bets and wagers, but I also have no clue about the likely or unlikely outcomes of the pandemic, the protests, the police, the social compact, international relations, my future as either a salaried employee, a consultant or a punter, the future of my neighbourhood, or whether things are about to get cataclysmically worse or exponentially better.
In fact, I don't know whether to shit or steal third.
All I know is that I'm in a state of great angst about things large and small. Real angst. Can no longer bring myself to take a toke or a drink, because I feel like constancy of focus might be all I have left. That and my health, my marriage, and at least my absence of debt. A few friends, and still a job and some paying gigs, at least for right now.
Thank goodness for my blessings, because beyond those, shit is off the hook fucked to me.
And I'm still struggling to remember who that guy was who was always collecting profits "for his dusty bin""..
The way folks in North America are behaving, I think a big destructive second wave is inevitable. Maybe a rally this summer, followed by a wipeout in the Fall?
I defer to all who are far less stupid than me, which is most.
I know Doc axxed us to dicsucs, but I'd like to go back to Jorma's most excellent post. Jorma reminds me of an old Stoolie with a three-letter name, but that's neither there nor here..
According to this count the number of cases worldwide has passed 4 million.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries
In the US and Western Europe I multiply that by 20 to account for light and asymptomatic cases. For the rest of the world whatever the numbers reported they must be dwarfed by the reality. The reported numbers are of use mostly to judge the rate of change in infections but even that is going to be skewed because almost every government in the world has a thumb on the scale to drive the numbers down.
So let me make a WAG and say the total number of cases worldwide is 200 million. That's 2.5% of the world population.
Library's cafes and gyms are interesting but it is workplaces where the social/political/economic story is going to be told. When a few billion people are made aware that going to work risks killing them or their family or friends I'm thinking this is not going to make workers think of the company first. It will make people question their work as what defines them. This is not bullish for the corporate model.
I'm not sure of my points exactly but whatever we have seen so far is nothing compared to what's coming.
I agree. This would ordinarily be Mad-Max-bearish. But I'm not totally sure- all the stimulus so far with its minor impact (also bearish) could lead to a hyperinflation as currencies collapse. If that's the case, then paper markets will rally along with everything else, but be eclipsed by commodities. Already I'm hearing (can't remember where I read it) that frozen real estate markets in Canada are witnessing a huge y-o-y gain (~20%) for those sales actually occurring.
Or, also potentially bullish, a widespread/global infection that's staggered in time would permit health care (and all the other associated services) to better handle the load. Many would die, but the deaths would skew toward the oldest and most infirm/compromised. Not good at all, but also not so bearish, with the vast majority surviving. The pandemic is already bringing about changes to the collective consciousness, though not as much or as deep as it should - I'd posit that it's because the average person today is so absolutely fucking bag-of-nails stupid- but things are just getting started and repetition is a strong persuader.
So I think that the 1950s-commute-to-work-company-man model is definitely going to take a hit. There will be contraction and losses in some sectors, industries, locations, etc, but also growth and gains in others as we're already seeing.
So while I agonize over whether to go all to cash and take my losses, or stay in, double down and pray, I'm wondering whether we don't get a muddle-through.
Pigeon chess. Don't get drawn into playing it.
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Pigeon_chess
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Pigeon chess
Here in Canada's epicentre, people have mentally checked out of the whole thing. They've made their cookies and sourdough breads, fought for their toilet paper, and now the pandemic is no longer interesting. I think it's making a huge catastrophic second wave inevitable.
I have major losses racked up from the initial leg down, now about 50% recovered. Can't afford to miss the rest of the recovery if one's coming, but can't afford to ride this steaming turd back down. I'm convinced that infections and illness will accelerate considerably during the course of the summer and fall.
My brother just forwarded me an email I had sent over a decade ago, containing the following:
QUOTE(Jimi @ Apr 6 2008, 07:54 PM)
Here's an alternative explanation.
After a generation suffered a youth in economic Depression, and then busted their teen & early-20s youth asses saving democracy during the 1940s, they came home and procreated. Their spawn have turned out to be the most indulged and spoiled and unreflective generation humanity has ever known.
They want it all, they've always wanted it all, they demand it now, and they want to stick someone else with the tab.
Their idea of a perfect life is spending every last dime they have today, and spending every last dime of the next generation's tomorrow... and if they can figure out a way to live beyond tomorrow, well, they'll just have to dip into the generation-after-that's earnings.
Because they have Jones' with which they must keep pace.
That's why they build McMansions in butt-effing nowhere in Colorado and stuff it with 50" LCD crap on credit. These are endless little temples mounted to their self-indulgence. Their own bottomless vanity.
So, they vote themselves generic drug benefits, and don't even pretend to offer to pay for it.
And they invade distant countries, and don't even pretend to offer to pay for it.
And they sit around and grumble when the foreign revolving credit account runs dry about the global injustice that's occurred, never pausing to recognize that the standards they've managed to steal from both foreigners and from this nation's future generations far, far surpasses anything they've done to prepare for their own retirement or to hand off a country in better shape than they received.
You know what it's like to live in the wake of the effing Baby Boomers?
It's like having a neighbor who feeds his dog chocolate Ex-Lax, and then opens his front gate so that he'll go crap in your yard, and then he leans over the fence and bitches endlessly about the smell coming from your garbage cans after you've cleaned up.
Busy all day, catching up.
That Doppler launch channel made just made me spray sleepytime tea on my phone. W
WD Gann and the Brooklyn Bridge charts. I preferred trading the DickArms those days.
I miss Shorty but he's with me whenever I fart in a public place - elevator, lobby, concourse.
Every day, in other words 😄
He had so many classics. His take on the red bouncy ball gym teachers comes to mind whenever I have to deal with government.
