That last comment that got removed..... Life is tough for market timers.scintillator wrote: ↑Wed May 27, 2020 7:06 amJust goes to show you that even when you get the core thesis right, you can still lose to people who get the core thesis wrong.scintillator wrote: ↑Sun Mar 29, 2020 8:49 pm So I don't really see any hot takes here on predictions of inflation versus deflation in a scenario of protracted recession with several injections of stimulus. I guess I'll just keep the money in my settlement fund until I start redeploying into stocks in the next 2–18 months.
As for people saying I should buy inverse ETFs or puts, or short the market some other way, I'm not doing that because I'm of course not sure I'm right. And I would get wiped out if there were a cure or some other bullish development. Taking my stock exposure down from 90% to 20% is a form of shorting the market. I considered buying puts instead of selling the underlying, but it didn't make a whole lot of sense because of tax considerations (and now volatility is super high, so puts are very expensive). So the way I'm betting on this decline is by dramatically reducing my AA. And it seems stupid to buy an inverse ETF and have to pay short-term cap gains and high fees and suffer beta slippage when I'm long the underlying index. If I wanted that more exposure I would just sell more of the underlying index.
I don't think the mortality rate is 1%. Korea has handled this better than any country with high infection rates and they're well over 1%. I think the death rate in the US should be over 2% even if hospitals don't get totally overwhelmed. Without adequate medical treatment, death rates should be well higher than 2%. I was only saying that we'll get to 100k dead in May if the lock-down is taken off at Easter like Trump announced last week. Even still, I think there's a good chance we get to 100k dead by the end of May even with an extended lock-down. I'll be sure to bump this in May if that happens. I think pretty much everyone in this thread fails to appreciate how virulent and deadly this virus is. Maybe we'll find an effective treatment; maybe the virus will mutate to something more benign; maybe I'm just wrong. But stating that 100k dead by the end of May "will not happen" could prove regrettable for you, and others in the market that share your certainty.ValuationsMatter wrote: ↑Sun Mar 29, 2020 8:50 am Your hypothetical is one of extreme pessimism. At a mortality rate of 1%, which is a fair estimate for the disease, your estimate of 100k dead would require 10M infections. At present, there are only 680k infections worldwide. There are ~120k confirmed cases in the US. Unabated, the virus doubles every 4 days. It would have to double 6-7 times to get to that total count. That's almost another full month of unabated exponential growth. That will not happen.
I'm still on the sidelines for the most post. Obviously I wish I'd been in on the ride up to 3000, but I'm not giving up hope that what I think is the economic reality from this virus will manifest in the stock market in the short to medium term. If SPX never gets near where it was when I started this thread, and I get totally punished for this move, and all the Pollyanna retail permabulls win and I lose, [political comment removed by admin LadyGeek].
Just pretend you're really good at everything, except for actively investing.
Just pretend that you set up automatic investing, and then regularly move your saving surplus to investment accounts.
Just pretend that you don't really care what market is doing.
Now, when you come back and check your accounts in 20-30 years, you will be very happy.
Life happens outside of your portfolio. Quote me on that.