Cool and damp. [65F and pouring rain at 6am]
Yesterday stayed coolish and damp all day with overcast skies. There was a bit of light misty drizzle around 9pm, but it never really rained.
In WuFlu news, China got sloppy with their lies and now everyone is catching on to the fact they’ve been underreporting infections and deaths. If you assume the virus is exponential in china, like it is everywhere else, the numbers are truly horrifying.
South Korea is F’d. Italy went from none to ~175 in a couple of days. Deaths are starting to show up too. To make it all even worse, there is evidence some guy developed it 27 days after contact. If true, none of the quarantine, for thousands world wide, can be trusted. Potentially infectious people have been returned to their communities.
Essentially overnight Italy closed schools, churches, and canceled public events. 10 or 12 cities are under movement control. Are you ready for something like that?
The next thing to be in short supply seems to be hospital grade disinfectants and cleaners. I spot checked some that are in my local auction, and at least one is completely sold out at the manufacturer’s site. Ebay still has it and prices don’t seem extortionate yet. I’ll be a bidder locally and hopefully a winner.
Besides masks, think about shoe covers or booties. You don’t want to be tracking stuff all over your house. Think about setting up an anteroom or entryway to leave your outerwear and shoes. If the longer incubation is valid, it’s already out in our communities and we just haven’t seen the cases yet.
Think about stuff you need that only comes from China and start getting enough of that. I ordered the cameras I have been thinking about and they shipped today from stock. That won’t be true for long as imported goods start selling out.
If your employment or business depends on large gatherings of people, you might want to look hard at a situation where that doesn’t happen. If I was still doing public events and corporate training conferences, and trade shows for a living I’d be looking for something else to do, BEFORE everyone else is looking too.
This is looking less and less like a nothing burger, and more and more like a world changer.
—
And on a completely unrelated note, another whistleblower committed suicide. Hmmmmm.
Keep stacking.
n
As much as I hate the tax paperwork associated with the ETF, waiting for better opportunities, I parked my brokerage mad money in GLD last week, and I’ve seen a 2.5% pop in just a few trading days.
GLD is an interesting abstraction in normal to somewhat-normal circumstances, but I don’t pretend it would be there in a SHTF scenario.
These numbers are official but probably out of date already:
Confirmed Cases by Country/Region
77,150 Mainland China
833 South Korea
691 Others
215 Italy
154 Japan
89 Singapore
79 Hong Kong
61 Iran
35 Thailand
35 US
30 Taiwan
22 Australia
22 Malaysia
16 Germany
16 Vietnam
13 United Arab Emirates
13 UK
12 France
10 Macau
9 Canada
3 Philippines
3 India
2 Russia
2 Spain
1 Lebanon
1 Nepal
1 Cambodia
1 Israel
1 Belgium
1 Finland
1 Sweden
1 Egypt
1 Sri Lanka
Last week South Korea and Italy had none.
n
Viruses of another nature are still being used against us too.
https://www.us-cert.gov/ncas/alerts/aa20-049a
n
This article should surprise no one.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8036699/People-working-arts-say-ostracized-controversial-opinions-new-study-reveals.html
‘I have felt like a traitor to my own self-expression, but I have to ask if anyone needs to hear from me at all.’
–that is not a question anyone on the left ever seems to ask themselves.
n
Hmmm, twitter suspended the account of the guy posting china videos.
n
And there are NO suggested ‘follow these guys’ links either. Impossible to avoid those suggestions normally.
I’m not a farmer, but don’t the fields in china have to start getting prepped in the next month or so? Tilling soil. Transporting seed, fertilizer, and insecticides. Tractors need parts and maintenance.Lots of hand labor to ready the rice paddies. If things don’t begin to ease up soon how will this effect China’s ability to feed itself by the end of the summer? I don’t have an answer, just asking a question. What happens when 1.4 billion people begin to feel hungry?
Maybe it’ll only be 1 billion by then….
n
Viruses of another nature are still being used against us too.
There again, the problem is magnified mostly due to people being careless and covering up, specifically what they do with their work laptops.
My McDonald’s ran out of large coffee cups today. Printed in the FUSE, but no idea where the raw materials come form. Probably not WuFlu related, but…. Definitely expect to see more disruptions.
As much as I hate the tax paperwork associated with the ETF, waiting for better opportunities, I parked my brokerage mad money in GLD last week, and I’ve seen a 2.5% pop in just a few trading days.
I tried to make a trade last thursday night on Fidelity. They totally lost the market order. My guess is that Fidelity rolled to the backup database and servers after the primary database hosed itself last thursday. I was not happy when I tried to get money out of my account on Friday.
Ransomware Impacting Pipeline Operations
My parents city of 12,000 people in south Texas got ransomwared two weeks ago. They refused to pay the ransom of $325,000. The city lost all their servers and data. They are rebuilding but is total chaos for people paying bills and using services (water, sewer, etc). No online backups.
A good overview if you still haven’t given the subject a lot of thought….
https://www.survivopedia.com/what-survival-foods-you-actually-need/
n
I don’t think that word means what you think it means….
https://www.zerohedge.com/health/store-shelves-empty-virus-spread-sparks-panic-buying-across-italy
“Prudent” buying…. driven by entirely rational fear that they’ll be locked into their houses with only whatever they already have. I hope every smarmy snotty commentor at the link ends up hungry. After wailing that the .gov hasn’t helped them enough.
‘cuz Chinese serfs are learning what it means when the .gov decides to help you, good and hard.
n
(and please, everyone here, consider that this time the sky may actually be falling…)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bbv5B71KmkA
My wife, who has been closely following the developments in the PRC, says that the government has been making food deliveries to the people who have been locked in their houses. She also says that only Wuhan is isolated and that the other large cities which have been reported as being blockaded actually aren’t on lockdown. It’s more that people are discouraged from going out and about if they don’t need to. If you need to go out for work or shopping, you can. This is necessary to keep the PRC’s economy from shutting down.
I vouch for none of the above. My wife gets information from both Chinese news sites (aka propaganda) and blogs and communication with individuals in various cities.
Haven’t read today’s comments – I’ll get to them. But first, this looks like a solid, informative article about the Corona Virus.
And this site tries to maintain current Corona statistics. Scroll down for country information.
The Johns Hopkins one I’ve been watching has gone down and stayed down for a while…
https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6
Hopefully it comes back up soon.
n
–that ain’t good. But it’s pretty quick for them to have been infected on the flight home, it seems more likely to me that they were infected but not testing positive yet when they got on the plane.
n
I tried to make a trade last thursday night on Fidelity. They totally lost the market order. My guess is that Fidelity rolled to the backup database and servers after the primary database hosed itself last thursday. I was not happy when I tried to get money out of my account on Friday.
Fidelity has been a mess for about a week. A Market Order would most likely come out of their dark pool and filled internally so that isn’t surprising.
I’m going to move my GTE/Verizon 401(k) out of Fidelity when I’m not on death march and have time to research the rollover process. I get another 25% vesting at my current employer on Wednesday so I’ve tried to keep my head down and be a good employee as of late.
Fidelity has reporting chores for my AT&T 401(k), but the actual account is held at … State Street (?).
I hope you locked in some of your profits. Note: this has nothing to do with today’s market news. When I did some short term trading, I always took some profits on a pop. Sometimes those pops were over 100%, and I pulled my money and played with the house’s. Good feeling.
Yes, it IS gambling, but you said your mad money. To me, that means I could lose all of it and not be hurt.
I hope you locked in some of your profits. Note: this has nothing to do with today’s market news. When I did some short term trading, I always took some profits on a pop. Sometimes those pops were over 100%, and I pulled my money and played with the house’s. Good feeling.
GLD and the corresponding physical metal market have been the subject of much price manipulation for a while. The WuFlu is one of those situations where there is only so much the big players can do to keep a lid on the price. I’ll see where it goes, but every month holding GLD requres another piece of paper on the taxes since fees are assessed monthly within the ETF.
Most of my brokerage account got sold off 10 years ago to pay for the Vantucky move fiasco. Anything I have out there now is mad money and not important to living day-to-day. I’d say it is what Dr. Pournelle termed “beer money”, but I don’t drink beer.
Just got back from meeting a guy for ebay sale. The item was large and fragile so I was very happy not to have to ship it. Nice guy, drove in from Louisiana. He and his wife are out thrift store shopping and are going to stay the night.
n
One very nice thing is that Walmart stores are all over the place. Went to Walmart this morning in Norman, got new jumper cables, brown boot polish, and Irish spring Aloe soap.
I needed new jumper cables because I fill up my vehicle when I arrive at where I am going so I can make a quick getaway. At midnight last night, two young ladies with a 3 year old needed a jump after filling up next me at the Shell. I gave them my jumper cables since she needed them more than I did. It was obvious that she was going to need them on the next start.
I needed the brown boot polish since my new boots showed up as 11d instead of 11ee as the box said. I took them to our local boot barn and got my money back. I’ll order more later but I had to polish my six+ month old pair that I wear six days a week.
And I forgot my bath soap that I like. The hotel oatmeal soap was not optimal.
Like I said, nice to have a brick and mortar store that I can go to quickly. I wonder what the future will bring as more and more people shop online.
Like I said, nice to have a brick and mortar store that I can go to quickly. I wonder what the future will bring as more and more people shop online.
Vancouver, WA. Or, as I frequently call it here, Vantucky. The WA State side of the Portland Metro has 10% sales tax (State + county + city + neighborhood) vs. tax-free shopping in Oregon. Retail is pretty limited, but WalMart is still there along with Target … or were when we left.
WA State had a labor cost advantage, but I believe the minimum wage is $15 after the latest annual adjustment.
If you ever go see the Oregon Coast (everyone should go … once … for a week, no more than that), take a trip north from the Portland Airport and cruse east from I-205 on Mill Plain, soaking in the scenery. That’s the future.
And, yes, Trader Joes is there, but that is the saddest Trader Joes I’ve ever seen.
Stocks were on sale today, but I’m not buying. Looks like a Dutch auction. There will be a buying opportunity. How soon depends on how long you can wait until the bottom comes. No one rings a bell at the bottom.
Bernie said what? Oh, yeah, that will sit well in South Florida.
Florida Democrats are already going to pay the price for Andrew Gillum and Bill Nelson at the top of their 2018 ticket for the next decade or more. Bernie *winning* would probably be worse for them than losing since the only state-wide Dem office holder, the Ag Commissioner, is up for reelecction in 2022.
https://www.orlandosentinel.com/politics/os-ne-bernie-sanders-florida-chances-20200224-elmhdbga3vavvjog5rpo5gvl6m-story.html
I do, less than one per week.
As for investing, people should have money up and down the risk scale. The upper end point should depend on risk tolerance and the desire to make returns. Any good book on financial planning will explain this. That said, I enjoyed the speculative end, but only after years of building the safer end, which includes stuff outside the stock market. I don’t look back much, but if I did, I would find that I often made the biggest percentage returns on the smallest fraction of the portfolio. Duh, that’s the way it is supposed to work. Textbook.
As for catastrophes, all of us are just one big one from ruin. A co-worker used to joke that he feared an airplane falling on him. We worked less than 20 feet from each other for a few years. Made me only slightly nervous.
You sir are kind.
” I gave them my jumper cables since she needed them more than I did. It was obvious that she was going to need them on the next start.”
You sir are kind.
Texas heat kills the new enviromentally friendly insulation fairly quickly. My last set lasted six years in the trunk of my car. Better that the cables go to good use while they have some useful life remaining.
Who knew. Another modern fail. I have two or three sets of jumper cables, all of which are well over 40 years old. They have been in cars here in the Mojave desert all that time, and are still in good condition. Guess I will keep them.
I even used to have a set I made using welding cable, with an aircraft battery connector for our Cessna airplane. I included it when we sold the plane. I worried that the rubber insulation might crack, but it never did. That cable lived in a car for the time we had the plane. It was too heavy to carry in the plane. Some airports of the time (1980s) had ground power, and of course the engine could be started by hand if the battery was not up to it. Ground power is mainly used for servicing or charging the battery.
I considered putting an aircraft connector in each of our cars, but never did. They are convenient, but expensive. I would probably use something less expensive.
You sir are kind.
Thanks but it was the right thing to do. And, I could easily afford to buy new ones. Her F250 had seen better days and she said her battery light was on.
Of course, a little kindness goes a long way. Jesus asked us to be kind to each other and I try to follow that. Sometimes.
Sure does.
He also used violence at least once, driving the money changers from the temple courtyard.