Covid-19

[weijian]

By now, i think most of us would have heard of Dr Facci's latest warning.

For OPMIs, i think one of our greatest built-in advantage, is that we do not have clients and as such, our capital (if we didn't leverage) is largely dependent on our own temperament and asset allocation. That said though, whether this advantage is utilized or wasted is really entirely up to us.

I’m Worried

No one ever knows what’s going to happen in the future but this year it seems like the various paths we could take are even more uncertain than ever.

2020 has been one of the most volatile years on record but not just for the stock market. Businesses have been disrupted like never before. Our emotions are all over the place from all of the worries that have been introduced. Life itself is unstable.

Unfortunately, everyone has to be willing to accept volatility in almost all areas of their life right now.

That means we all have to live with more worries until we get past the pandemic.

https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2020/06/im-worried/

[weijian]

Pandemics Leave Us Forever Altered

Americans may have forgotten the 1918 pandemic, but it did not forget them. Garthwaite matched NHIS respondents’ health conditions to the dates when their mothers were probably exposed to the flu. Mothers who got sick in the first months of pregnancy, he discovered, had babies who, 60 or 70 years later, were unusually likely to have diabetes; mothers afflicted at the end of pregnancy tended to bear children prone to kidney disease. The middle months were associated with heart disease.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...ry/610558/

[opmi]

Pandemics Leave Us Forever Altered

Americans may have forgotten the 1918 pandemic, but it did not forget them. Garthwaite matched NHIS respondents’ health conditions to the dates when their mothers were probably exposed to the flu. Mothers who got sick in the first months of pregnancy, he discovered, had babies who, 60 or 70 years later, were unusually likely to have diabetes; mothers afflicted at the end of pregnancy tended to bear children prone to kidney disease. The middle months were associated with heart disease.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...ry/610558/

chun bo?.....correlation not equal to causation. lifestyle also more sedentary over past 60-70 years...

[Curiousparty]

https://on.mktw.net/2ZQ9Vx1 Check out this article from MarketWatch - The coronavirus has given investors a ‘once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,’ says hedge-fund billionaire

The coronavirus has given investors a ‘once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,’ says hedge-fund billionaire




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

[weijian]

Some Morgan-ism before the weekend is always good.

Here We Are: 5 Stories That Got Us To Now

veryone is innocently short-sighted when trying to make sense of 2020.

January, before Covid-19 upended everything, feels like a different lifetime. March is already a blur. Time slows when you experience surprise, and every day of 2020 brings a new shock. So the recent past feels like distant history.

But if you survey the confusing mess we’re in – 50 million jobs lost, 130,000 dead, Tesla stock up 400% – you have to remember that none of it happened in a vacuum. Every event has parents, grandparents, siblings, and cousins – previous events that planted the seeds, passed on their DNA, and continue to influence what’s happening today.

To have any hope of making sense of what’s happening in 2020, we have to pay attention to a bunch of seemingly unrelated stories that began before anyone had heard of Covid-19.

Here are five that seem particularly important.

https://www.collaborativefund.com/blog/h...us-to-now/

[dreamybear]

A risk if one buys bank shares based on % yield.

I do not have the dividend numbers at hand. But for a quick reference, the following may be helpful :
https://blog.seedly.sg/dbs-ocbc-uob-dividends/

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MAS calls on local banks to cap this year's dividends at 60% of previous year's
"....If a bank has already paid out interim dividends for Q12020, the dividend restrictions and the offering of dividends in scrip will be extended for an additional quarter until Q12021. The 60 per cent cap will apply to the revised period, but still reference FY2019...."

https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/compani...ious-years

[Wildreamz]

"I trust markets more than experts." - Aswath Damodaran

Postcards from the edge: Lessons from the COVID crisis

[specuvestor]

It's discretion of board to recommend and shareholders to approve. It is not written black and white but Optics has to be maintained that when employees, customers, community etc are hurting, it will have ripple effect if shareholders don't share the pain and vice versa when shareholders are hurting and management get pay rises

Thats's why governments clamped down on the dividend and pay of banks post GFC when mgt / shareholders don't get it or don't care about other vested interests

If a Singapore public company has received aid from the government (national reserves), is it fair for the public company to pay dividends to its shareholders.

Taking it even further, if a company cuts salaries of employees, is it right that it pays dividends to shareholders. Considering that the relationship between a company and its employees is a contract stipulating a fixed salary, while the relationship between a company and its shareholders is one of caveat emptor (accepted risks-and-rewards).

Now that MAS has stepped in and remove any uncertainties on banks' dividend, I think the uncertainties about the COVID-19 beast is also more or less understood. That means a massive lock-down going forward will not be likely going forward as the economical and social impact is too great

1) Anecdotally asymptomatic spreading is more contagious than originally thought. I think this was the biggest gap in the beginning

2) It is pretty understood now that it is generally not lethal except for (i) elders (ii) overwhelmed medical sector. So it is still important to keep people quarantined to reduce the infected and hence the hospitalised. SG for example still has 109 hospitalised, 5763 in-care but has nil in ICU for past 3 weeks. With 27 COVID-19 deaths it is plausible that Dengue will kill more in SG this year

3) No of import cases has increased in drips and drabs past 2 month. Coupled with the Foreign Workers coming back to the community, does seems that magic number 14 days isolation works.

Interestingly coughs and flu cases are also going down sharply because of all these precautions. Nonetheless the isolation requirement is killing travels and socialising; 2021 is going to be a very tough year with more hardship in SG starting 4Q20 with the incentives disappearing

[Wildreamz]

Worldwide new cases and death stabilizing; finally some light at the end of the tunnel?

My bet is we will start to see some visibility on recovery, starting next quarter or 2.

[weijian]

Momentum trading is profitable, until it is not.

There is a season for everything under the sun.

The wider risks in SoftBank’s US tech bet


Even before the identification of SoftBank, there were concerns that the US market was defying fundamentals, and that the one-sided rally in US technology stocks was unsustainable. Trading volumes on Nasdaq, where most of the big tech stocks are listed, are double what they were before the pandemic. Monetary stimulus by central banks in response to the pandemic have helped to propel equity markets higher. The retail trading boom, as day traders have turned to online trading platforms such as Robinhood, has also driven much of the activity, both in equities and derivatives. 


https://www.ft.com/content/b49f60be-7619...24fcbdc1cc