As someone living in Hong Kong, it kind of blows my mind how little attention Americans have given this situation. All but a few Americans have their head in the sand on this, and the markets have not at all priced in the all but certain long term impact of this.
I've personally broken my long-time rule of no trading public markets and opened a Robinhood account to hedge against this. So far this week I'm up 5x on those hedges. Markets are starting to realize, but I don't think we're even close to having fully priced in the impact of this.
Everybody remembers the 2008 recession. A subset of people during that recession made a killing. The Big Short was a great book (and movie) about this. This is probably the first new opportunity to be a "big shorter."
I'd love to agree with you, but I keep being reminded that 'the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.'
Sure, I'm nearly certain this is going to give us 2-4 quarters of negative growth, worldwide, but I don't know when the market is actually going to price that in.
Your timing was good since you bought when the market may have been mispricing volatility. Assuming these are puts, a lot if your gain is from the volatility shoot up.
At this point, the market has corrected volatility pricing dramatically (vix is doubled). Odds are over 50% we'll see sp500 drop below 2900 in next month (Black Scholes). But that doesn't mean a short is profitable - I recall 2008 but also the false recession of late 2018 - few people could have accurately predicted both results.
> A subset of people during that recession made a killing.
And a lot of people lost a lot of money trying to time that. It wasn't if, but when. People were talking about the mortgage driven bubble for years by the time 2008 rolled around.
I think it's because the death rate is hard to track and while "high" does not seem nearly as bad as the spanish flu. In part, the damage appears to be China's methods of trying to contain the virus that are making it worse...
For instance, the death rates appear to have a distribution mostly impacting the elderly (incidentally those who are also most likely to have a weaker immune system, but also believe in less conventional medicine:
Not saying this isn't bad, the current stats are showing something around a 0.7% mortality rate[2][3]. The real scare here, is like the spanish flu, there's a chance it can evolve into a more deadly strain (such as SARS) the more people who contract it. If that's the case, we could be seeing 10% fatality rates across the board.
In any case, general point, people American's aren't super worried about it because we have a great healthcare system, and it's spread is limited thus far. I do think a panic will set in as every major city likely now has infected individuals. So it's a good time to pull out of the market.
Either we know different Americans, or have different expectations of what their response is likely to be. I have heard from several friends and from family about their acquisition of significant quantities of non-perishable food, boxes of face masks, and ammo. Definitely don't have their heads in the sand.
I'm somewhat closer to "head in the sand" myself. I am watching the news closely, but don't feel anything I can do in my immediate daily life is consequential to the situation.
Sample size of one, but, everyone at the office today was talking about this, my parents and my wife's parents both called to ask what we thought about it... seems like it's very top of mind for most people I know.
Good time to load up on gold and us dollars. I think coronavirus will be the catalyst to end the business cycle and blow the top off some of the major fiscal problems that have popped up.
If you come out on top with your hedging, will you donate the profits to relief / training / prevention / education causes? Otherwise, you're literally profiting from the misfortune of others.
> It took four days for the patient to be tested for the coronavirus by the CDC, according to the letter, because the patient didn’t fit the initial criteria of a likely patient. The CDC confirmed the diagnosis on Wednesday, according to the report.
This is what’s scary to me as that means the patient probably wasn’t isolated with daily healthcare.
Does this mean everyone who came in contact with them during that time is self monitoring for symptoms for some large number of days?
My guess is that the world didn't really understand what and why China did take such draconian measures (Shutting down whole cities, locking people in their homes, stopping transportation, building hospitals in record time, etc...). From the graph it looks like China successfully contained the disease. China has around 78,500 cases; around 65,000 of those are in Hubei which has 50 million people.
If we were to extrapolate these numbers to the rest of the world (ex. China), that would be around 8.19 million cases and around 350k deaths. But this assumes that the cities of the rest of the world could implement the strict curfews that China implemented.
It's also important to remember that Hubei had a big support network of neighboring cities which could provide resources. Countries where all cities will break out at the same time will have a hard time copping.
Here are estimates from MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis at Imperial College:
=> Estimated fatality ratio for infections 1% (including those who with mild cases and don't go to see doctors)
=> Estimated Case Fatality Rate (CFR) for travellers outside mainland China (mix severe & milder cases) 1%-5%
=> Estimated CFR for detected cases in Hubei (severe cases) 18%
The last line (18%) applies when the outbreak becomes prevalent in an area and overwhelm hospital capacity.
No country has sufficient ventilators, ECMO machines, and medical staff if infections become widespread since about 20% of infections requires hospitalization. People who need medical care from other causes would suffer from resource shortages as well. If not contained, dozens of cities around the world may become Hubei!
Marc Lipsitch, Professor of Epidemiology at Harvard, believes that it might infect 40-70% of population (excl. kids) without effective control measures.
His articles here: https://twitter.com/mlipsitch/status/1232504457377861632
From Report 6: "we estimated that about two thirds of COVID-19 cases exported from mainland China have remained undetected worldwide, potentially resulting in multiple chains of as yet undetected human-to-human transmission outside mainland China."
Report 4 was published on Feb 10 (the report itself doesn't include any date info, which IMO is a huge mistake, but you bet the data is even older -- the last death recorded in the attached CSV file was from Jan 23), with a couple of stats derived from only two deaths. I would take this report with a bowl of salt, or even mark it as obsolete.
"There are indications that other hospitals could be involved in the case. Kris Concepcion, fire chief and acting public information officer in Vacaville, Calif., said county officials had issued a directive not to transport any new patients to two local hospitals — NorthBay VacaValley Hospital in Vacaville and NorthBay Medical Center in nearby Fairfield. Concepcion declined to say why those orders had been given."
I'm confused about the Coronavirus mortality figures. The published numbers appear to be computed as deaths/cases. But cases is growing exponentially and deaths take time.
If you use deaths/(deaths+recoveries) you get a much higher figure, but presumably recoveries take longer than deaths.
This absolutely isn't accurate. The website promoting this garbage is dangerous. Nobody knows the total infected, nor the real fatality rate. But pay attention to how many on the cruise liners have died. 14% is a joke. My completely off the cuff, uneducated guess would be closer to 3%.
> If you use deaths/(deaths+recoveries) you get a much higher figure
You also have to take into account that mild cases are probably never detected and counted. So you are calculating the fraction of deaths among severe cases, not among all cases.
People have tried proper mathematical modelling but the data is fuzzy and it depends on how good the treatment is. Estimates seem to be about 2% of those getting it will die. I'm cautiously optimistic that chloroquine may drop the fatalities a fair bit. (http://www.china.org.cn/china/2020-02/22/content_75732846.ht...)
This is my big concern too. The bills are going to be massive, people are going to avoid the doctor because they don't have the financial means to pay. Everyone will be at increased risk because we've failed to have the decency to put together even basic universal health care in this country.
That's exactly why people will ignore the symptoms till they fall dead. This virus will be an interesting lesson for both China and America: China will learn the cost of being too authoritarian, since people there are afraid to seek help, and America will learn the cost of greed, since people here are afraid to well.. seek help, but for financial reasons.
This is 100% true, not sure why you're being downvoted. I imagine this will be the leading cause for the spread in the US. We like to on the image that we're first world, but that's only in regards to our professions and their education and training. Once you get into the details of the rest of the system we are anything but that. The healthcare system is merely another profit generating tool in this capitalism-above-all nation.
There will be exactly zero medical bankruptcies because of this.
If you are poor you get free healthcare, or at least subsidized. If you have more money you buy insurance, or your employer offers it.
At most you'll have to pay a several thousand dollar deductible, which isn't going to bankrupt anyone (remember that poor people get the free version).
Having this patient at my place of work does not worry me at all. Not one bit.
Time to use some of my vacation days.
Note: I'm not a medical practitioner, I am a research scientist and can do my work remotely. I admire and applaud the doctors and nurse who are there, and UC Davis has some of the best.
I kinda foresee this spreading in US the worst, people who work in low paid jobs like McDonalds (which requires lots of people contact) rarely take sick days there as far as i remember.
Many of these claims are from low-quality sources. For the specific point about funerals, you cite a single number in a single funeral home on a single day and try to extrapolate from that.
China banned funerals and mandated cremations, and my guess is that they did so for the purpose of masking the death toll. We would be foolish to trust China's words rather than its actions, and its actions indicate that the death toll was sufficient to justify a substantial shutdown of an entire industrial region of the country.
"The order also prohibits funeral ceremonies for those who have died from the virus, potentially cutting off the grieving process and any religious ceremony for families and entire communities who are mourning the loss of their loved ones, and there is little sign such an arrangement is even necessary."
This post is not informative or helpful at all, you’re just fearmongering by posting a bunch of disturbing videos with scary summary text. It’s obvious your motivation is to simply stoke fears - whether that’s for financial gain or to demonize Chinese/Asian people is hard to tell
[+] [-] kenneth|6 years ago|reply
I've personally broken my long-time rule of no trading public markets and opened a Robinhood account to hedge against this. So far this week I'm up 5x on those hedges. Markets are starting to realize, but I don't think we're even close to having fully priced in the impact of this.
Everybody remembers the 2008 recession. A subset of people during that recession made a killing. The Big Short was a great book (and movie) about this. This is probably the first new opportunity to be a "big shorter."
[+] [-] 01100011|6 years ago|reply
Sure, I'm nearly certain this is going to give us 2-4 quarters of negative growth, worldwide, but I don't know when the market is actually going to price that in.
[+] [-] usaar333|6 years ago|reply
At this point, the market has corrected volatility pricing dramatically (vix is doubled). Odds are over 50% we'll see sp500 drop below 2900 in next month (Black Scholes). But that doesn't mean a short is profitable - I recall 2008 but also the false recession of late 2018 - few people could have accurately predicted both results.
[+] [-] bcrosby95|6 years ago|reply
And a lot of people lost a lot of money trying to time that. It wasn't if, but when. People were talking about the mortgage driven bubble for years by the time 2008 rolled around.
[+] [-] lettergram|6 years ago|reply
For instance, the death rates appear to have a distribution mostly impacting the elderly (incidentally those who are also most likely to have a weaker immune system, but also believe in less conventional medicine:
80+ years old 14.8%
70-79 years old 8.0%
60-69 years old 3.6%
50-59 years old 1.3%
40-49 years old 0.4%
30-39 years old 0.2%
20-29 years old 0.2%
10-19 years old 0.2%
0-9 years old no fatalities
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-se...
Not saying this isn't bad, the current stats are showing something around a 0.7% mortality rate[2][3]. The real scare here, is like the spanish flu, there's a chance it can evolve into a more deadly strain (such as SARS) the more people who contract it. If that's the case, we could be seeing 10% fatality rates across the board.
If you're interested in the history of the spanish flu, there's a great series here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQ9WX4qVxEo&list=PLhyKYa0YJ_...
In any case, general point, people American's aren't super worried about it because we have a great healthcare system, and it's spread is limited thus far. I do think a panic will set in as every major city likely now has infected individuals. So it's a good time to pull out of the market.
[2] https://www.statnews.com/2020/02/25/new-data-from-china-butt...
[3] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/coronavirus-update-79339-c...
[+] [-] chao-|6 years ago|reply
I'm somewhat closer to "head in the sand" myself. I am watching the news closely, but don't feel anything I can do in my immediate daily life is consequential to the situation.
[+] [-] abootstrapper|6 years ago|reply
I dollar cost average, but I plan to pick up extra stock in corona bear market if I can scratch any extra cash together.
[+] [-] burlesona|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wyxuan|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tudorw|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] totalZero|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] closeparen|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Intermernet|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SubiculumCode|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] prepend|6 years ago|reply
This is what’s scary to me as that means the patient probably wasn’t isolated with daily healthcare.
Does this mean everyone who came in contact with them during that time is self monitoring for symptoms for some large number of days?
[+] [-] csomar|6 years ago|reply
If we were to extrapolate these numbers to the rest of the world (ex. China), that would be around 8.19 million cases and around 350k deaths. But this assumes that the cities of the rest of the world could implement the strict curfews that China implemented.
It's also important to remember that Hubei had a big support network of neighboring cities which could provide resources. Countries where all cities will break out at the same time will have a hard time copping.
[+] [-] sciinfo|6 years ago|reply
=> Estimated fatality ratio for infections 1% (including those who with mild cases and don't go to see doctors)
=> Estimated Case Fatality Rate (CFR) for travellers outside mainland China (mix severe & milder cases) 1%-5%
=> Estimated CFR for detected cases in Hubei (severe cases) 18%
The last line (18%) applies when the outbreak becomes prevalent in an area and overwhelm hospital capacity.
No country has sufficient ventilators, ECMO machines, and medical staff if infections become widespread since about 20% of infections requires hospitalization. People who need medical care from other causes would suffer from resource shortages as well. If not contained, dozens of cities around the world may become Hubei!
Marc Lipsitch, Professor of Epidemiology at Harvard, believes that it might infect 40-70% of population (excl. kids) without effective control measures. His articles here: https://twitter.com/mlipsitch/status/1232504457377861632
--
Reference: Report 4 here: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/mrc-global-infectious-disease-ana...
From Report 6: "we estimated that about two thirds of COVID-19 cases exported from mainland China have remained undetected worldwide, potentially resulting in multiple chains of as yet undetected human-to-human transmission outside mainland China."
For concise interviews with experts and other info: Follow their Twitter at @MRC_Outbreak https://twitter.com/MRC_Outbreak
[+] [-] sciinfo|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oefrha|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aiyodev|6 years ago|reply
Edit: Downvotes? Really?
[+] [-] testfoobar|6 years ago|reply
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/northern-californian-t...
"There are indications that other hospitals could be involved in the case. Kris Concepcion, fire chief and acting public information officer in Vacaville, Calif., said county officials had issued a directive not to transport any new patients to two local hospitals — NorthBay VacaValley Hospital in Vacaville and NorthBay Medical Center in nearby Fairfield. Concepcion declined to say why those orders had been given."
Are these hospitals open now?
[+] [-] nullc|6 years ago|reply
If you use deaths/(deaths+recoveries) you get a much higher figure, but presumably recoveries take longer than deaths.
[+] [-] ALittleLight|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] axaxs|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wcoenen|6 years ago|reply
You also have to take into account that mild cases are probably never detected and counted. So you are calculating the fraction of deaths among severe cases, not among all cases.
[+] [-] datashaman|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tim333|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nl|6 years ago|reply
It will be the number of medical bankruptcies.
Also it'll be interesting to see how much more contagious it will be in a country where people avoid hospitals because of the cost.
[+] [-] Pfhreak|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fg6hr|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hurrdurr2|6 years ago|reply
There is little to none surge capacity at US hospitals.
[+] [-] AnthonyMouse|6 years ago|reply
The bigger problem is people who keep going to work when they're sick instead of staying home.
[+] [-] hanniabu|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ars|6 years ago|reply
There will be exactly zero medical bankruptcies because of this.
If you are poor you get free healthcare, or at least subsidized. If you have more money you buy insurance, or your employer offers it.
At most you'll have to pay a several thousand dollar deductible, which isn't going to bankrupt anyone (remember that poor people get the free version).
[+] [-] SubiculumCode|6 years ago|reply
Time to use some of my vacation days.
Note: I'm not a medical practitioner, I am a research scientist and can do my work remotely. I admire and applaud the doctors and nurse who are there, and UC Davis has some of the best.
[+] [-] deniscepko2|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neonate|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] briandear|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] echelon|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] totalZero|6 years ago|reply
China banned funerals and mandated cremations, and my guess is that they did so for the purpose of masking the death toll. We would be foolish to trust China's words rather than its actions, and its actions indicate that the death toll was sufficient to justify a substantial shutdown of an entire industrial region of the country.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/02/china-virus-funeral-o...
"The order also prohibits funeral ceremonies for those who have died from the virus, potentially cutting off the grieving process and any religious ceremony for families and entire communities who are mourning the loss of their loved ones, and there is little sign such an arrangement is even necessary."
[+] [-] itsgrimetime|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SubiculumCode|6 years ago|reply