Coronavirus and Stock Markets - Thoughts?

This market seems dangerously detached from reality to me; layoffs in tech companies alone are going to hit the US (and global) economy hard, on top of the massive cliff demand for most products apart from essentials fell off a few weeks ago. Many of these jobs are not coming back.

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I did it.

This was on CNBC’s World news site until I hit refresh:

Simpler times.

Happy Valentine’s.

Managements lacking transparency and accountability during Covid-19

During corona, you can @ certain CEOs of public companies and hopefully they’ll @ back at ya.


(sorry)

With other managers it’s like this:

They could use ZOOM or record a shareholder rant for YouTube.

Or if they get unhappy - dump their shares.

This is not an investment advice.

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It’s the weekend, grab a cuppa and relax with some crunched numbers:

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It is tinfoil but they do own a 21% stake in it :smile: …just stating a fact lol

You could use any of the well known spread betting or CFD firms to ‘short’ the S&P or other indexes. IG/PLUS500. They are CFD so you are not technically shorting the index but the outcome is the same, you make or lose money proportional to the decline/rise in the underlying index.

Describing ownership is stating a fact.

Asserting that somehow the Rothschild’s stake confers an enhanced ability by the Economist to foretell future events is expressing an opinion.

An opinion which likely has a basis in borderline paranoid conspiracies rooted in anti-Semitic tropes rather than proven evidence.

Anyway, gtg, I’ve got a zoom date with George Soros!

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Has the S&P 500 Healthcare etf disappeared from FreeTrade app?

Back on topic, there is now a significant movement in the US to reopen, and some states are reopening today. I think this is premature and will prolong the outbreak unfortunately, combined with Trump undermining state messaging on lockdowns. Bad news for the rest of us as the world economy is so reliant on the US.

How long does everyone think the disruption will last now? I’m leaning more towards the pessimistic side that the economic impact of lockdowns will long outlast the outbreak itself.

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Think about it like this… They reopen some people die, he spins his way out of it and gets re elected and the market rallies again. Far fetched?

The various presentations I’ve attended for my employer suggest we can expect multiple waves of infections, the severity of which will depend on the familiar mitigation measures. Best bet is to check in with the boffins:

https://mrc-ide.github.io/covid19-short-term-forecasts/index.html

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Yeah it seems like it to me too

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Its visible for me as one of my holdings must be just a bug or something.

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https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-18/denmark-extends-business-aid-to-increase-spending-by-15-billion

“The government also said that companies which pay out dividends, buy back own shares or are registered in tax havens won’t be eligible for any of the aid programs, which now amount to a total of 400 billion kroner, when including loans and guarantees.”

Wish it would happen everywhere, not just Denmark

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This needs to be the norm. To protect tax payers and to encourage businesses to register and pay their fair share of tax.

In the US we are seeing the government stimulous going to close friends of the major banks and not the needy small businesses. I hope we don’t have the same issues here with our own government backed loans.

On that topic.

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One company seems to have had second thoughts about the optics, at least:

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/20/business/shake-shack-ppp-loan-sba/index.html

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I totally agree there needs to be a global coordinated effort on addressing aggressive tax avoidance and in cases of crony capitalism, introduce coordinated legislation to clawback money that needs to be returned to otherwise strong businesses to support them as going concerns as this crisis continues to unfold. Appreciate that’s easier said than done, and probably a bit of wishful thinking on my part!

On the 100% government loan guarantee, instinctively I think banks should have some skin in the game - even just 5% yet I had an interesting call with a global bank This morning that’s very good at credit who said they are struggling to price risk beyond 1 year - and that’s for decent corporates, let alone the sub-investment grade names.

I think that captures the scale of the uncertainty we’re facing here and underscores why a 100% guarantee is indeed essential, but it does mean that the banks will need to step up on the recovery and not use the benefit of reduced capital costs by just returning more to shareholders, unless they share some of the upside with the government - yeah right!

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Toilet paper again:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-20/toilet-paper-squeeze-may-get-worse-on-sawmill-slowdown-in-canada

The price of WTI Crude oil has gone negative, there’s nowhere to store it so they’re paying you to take it away!

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