Shanghai Disneyland will close in effort to contain coronavirus

Easy - if you don't get this vaccine grandma will die!

https://www.yahoo.com/news/coronavirus-losing-potency-top-italian-184358113.html

[Quote]

The new coronavirus is losing its potency and has become much less lethal, a senior Italian doctor said on Sunday.

"In reality, the virus clinically no longer exists in Italy," said Alberto Zangrillo

With the country on fire the past few days, not surprised this has not received more attention even if it is being reported accurately. Certainly wonderful news, if true, but I certainly am not letting my guard down yet.

Have not seen other sources on this yet but I also took a mental health break this weekend and been bingeing Ozark on Netflix. Some great characters. “Ruth” needs to run CP or KI and clear the riff raff out. 🤣

I'm pretty skeptical that one doctor in a regional hospital can really make that call (reminds me of those urgent care dudes in California). Pretty disappointing that Reuters would run with that.

Hope the doctors are right. But these statements seem too political or even vindictive:

Zangrillo said some experts were too alarmist about the prospect of a second wave of infections and politicians needed to take into account the new reality.

"We've got to get back to being a normal country," he said. "Someone has to take responsibility for terrorizing the country."

Assuming the docs are right about what they are seeing, is the Reuters article an example of being factual but not neutral?

Wapo addressed it last night in this and offers much more context. The observations do not necessarily support the conclusion.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/experts-dispute-reports-coron...story.html

The part about the slow mutation is one of the reasons I wouldn't expect the contagious behavior to change very quickly (that's great for developing treatments/vaccines, not so great for it burning itself out). The doctor's anecdote could be applied to any airborne human to human pathogen... when everyone stays home, you don't spread stuff around. This is the first spring I can remember in years that I haven't been sick in some way in the spring, and it's three times as weird because the same is true of my wife and son. It's pretty safe to assume it's because he's not at school, my wife isn't at a theater three times a week, and none of us are hanging out in sweaty theme park queues.

Absolutely. My youngest picks up every bug that comes around. He missed 13 days of school this year up until they closed 3/16. None of us has been sick since. Neither has my wife with all the cleaning at work and 2/3 the staff working from home.

I've actually found over the years the more stuff I've been exposed to over time the less and less I get sick as time goes on. When I worked in retail there was no pattern but when I started working for the school like clockwork every year 2 weeks into the school year I would get sick and then a few more times through the year. Last few years that has stopped happening. No more beginning of the year yuck and I hardly get sick throughout the school year anymore. Maybe once or twice. This past school year I missed once. Found out my student didn't come to school either and had strep so I got tested and I hadn't even gotten that and I had clearly been exposed my student and I spend our days pretty up close and personal. I had an ear infection. I haven't been sick since I've been home but my husband even with precautions is still bound to bring a certain amount of stuff home with him just because of what he does for a living so it's not like we're living in a clean little bubble even now.

Thought I'd drop back in.

Vegas Casinos opened today at 12:01 and the big casino groups are opening up more properties than originally announced due to demand. I can't see how this doesn't cause the number of cases to just explode.

Anyone lucky enough to have ridden the market up on this rally should be ready to bail at a moment's notice if things start to pop

I've often thought about that. Like, if I'm so sure it's coming, do I convert everything in my 401k to cash (can I even do that?) and let the stocks inevitably free fall? The optimism seems completely misplaced.

Probably not cash but something like a Cash Reserve fund or account that will have an minimal interest rate. Of course you have fees for the transactions.

Well, yeah, the 401k accounts all put non-invested money in money market accounts or something. (Sidebar: I accumulated like 41 shares of MSFT when I worked there, at like $25/share, intentionally small at the time. Holy crap did that blow up after 10 years! I forgot I had it!)

Depending on your 401(k) plan and its administrator (Vanguard, Transamerica, etc) you should have a "Guaranteed Option" or something that is the equivalent of a money market/cash account. It's NOT THE SAME as UNINVESTED FUNDS, but it acts in a similar way. it's invested in a fund that is primarily US Treasury Bonds, and obviously there is little to no upside to that. So if the market goes up another 1,000 points, you've missed that run. However, it is a way to "park" money "out of the market", if you think the market is in a bubble, without actually withdrawing monies from the tax deferred 401(k) account.

You can x-fer among funds and move stuff into that guaranteed option type. Remember that if you sell during the day, the transfer happens at close of business, and if you move funds after 4:00 pm today, the effect is as if you sold TOMORROW at 4:00pm. In other words, if you pull the trigger at 10:00 am EDT, and the world collapses at 1:00 pm EDT, your transaction is calculated as happening at 4:00pm so you didn't beat the buzzer. However, if you're thinking of doing it tomorrow because you think next week is going to suck, then you can do it.

As noted, 401(k) plans typically have a money market fund as an investment option. So you could re-balance your retirement account and put all of it or substantial portion of it in effectively cash. Many plans have limits on the number of times you can re-balance in a given number of months. If you re-balanced in the first quarter, you may not be able to do so again. And if you re-balance now, you may not be able to do so again for a certain period of time.

There are a number of studies on timing the market. Often time ends up being a fools errand. A lot of people end up late on getting out and getting back in to the market. So they end up selling low and buying high which is the exact opposite of what you want to do. And sure there are people who are able to do it. But how many times and how many times were they wrong in terms of timing? People tend to remember the gains more than they do the losses (same tends to be true of people who gamble). And you often can get similar returns with a lot less risk (because you will miss time the market reducing your returns in the process).

Yeah, that's really the rub. The market is so irrational. Maybe it always was, but it seems like it has been particularly so the last two or three years. My net loss on the year isn't that bad (yet) despite 1/4 of people being unemployed and no clear path out of the pandemic. Logically I would imagine that can't last, but here we are.

I have always thought about timing the market like sports betting, and just assume that the person on the other end of the transaction knows more about the market (sport) than I do. So, I don't even try. I put aside my 15% per month in my portfolio, I re-balance periodically, and I ignore the statements when they come in the mail. The ignoring part is important--it lets me remain unconcerned about drops.

We did this for the kids' 529 plans, too, using the age-based targeted allocations to handle the re-balancing for us. The elder just graduated with a small reserve fund to help with grad school. The younger has a couple of years to go, but even under pretty pessimistic assumptions will be in the same boat.

Shades said:

Polio? No thanks. But chicken pox wasn't that bad for me or my brother and sister. No vaccine existed for that when we were kids.

Yeah, I had chickenpox as a kid, too. And guess what I have now? Shingles, which is a recurrence of the chickenpox virus if you've been previously infected. It's absolutely freaking miserable, and I have a relatively mild case.

I WAS going to get the shingles vaccine (series of two shots) as soon as I turned 50, then this pandemic started and I figured I'd put it off for a bit.

So while polio is worse, don't dismiss chickenpox as "not that bad".

(As for the coronavirus vaccine in question, heck yes, sign me up as soon as it's verified to be safe and effective...)

There's a view of the market here, suggesting why it has recovered most of its value, that made a great deal of sense to me. Obviously your investment horizon is a significant factor in your decision (but if you have a short-term horizon, my question is whether you should be moving out of equities and into something more stable anyway).

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-06-01/stocks-are-tr...orget-2020

(Matt Levine is brilliant btw although I work for a bank so my interests may be a little skewed.)

In the summer of 2008 I was reading the news and thinking I should move everything in cash. I didn't and would have been kicking myself ever since - except that I rode the market back up over the following year, and there's no guarantee I would have been smart enough to get back in the following January.

Market looks more rational right now if you look long term. Reasonable at this point to expect a vaccine (not certain tho and timing is still open). But long term its reasonable to expect Covid-19 isn't a long term macro problem. And there are some pluses to come from it. Tech a big winner. Working from home. Zoom meetings over in-person meetings. Further push to automation. Reducing costs in long run. And to a certain extent, current Covid issues are at least partially baked in right now.

Most retirement savers would be better off with a handful of low cost index options. Or low cost age based funds which do not require periodic re-balancing. But the financial institutions do not make as much money with those as they can with their own actively managed funds. Ultimately though, invest in something. Even if its not the best return, it is a return and its a savings base.

I know tech is likely to be a big winner (living that dream), but as someone gainfully employed, I wonder if my behavior (miser mode) has a cascading effect. Trickle-down certainly doesn't work. If people are (reasonably) being cautious about their futures and their health, they back off on spending. I imagine that businesses will be conservative as well. Entire industries are at risk. An economy neutered for an entire year will have long running effects. "Long term" when the market typically freaks out about minor quarterly misses doesn't instill confidence.