Covid-19

Historical
It's an unusual time in our history, though not just the United States' history, but the entire world's history. And it's not JUST because of Covid-19 or the corona virus. It's the combination of that and the wide spread availability of social media. SARs in 2002 and the swine flu in 2009 really didn't have the same social media exposure. SARs was basically a TV and newspaper disease while the swine flu had more exposure, but not like today.

I KNEW about the swine flu, but really didn't know how many people it impacted (11-21% of the world population) and killed (150k-500k people). Apparently a follow up study said it was no worse than the regular flu though and the only oddity with this variation was that it didn't disproportionately impact the elderly and young.

Social Media and the Fools
So now we get to experience a pandemic in the age of social media. The disease started in Wuhan China, though some Chinese are claiming that American soldiers brought it TO them when they did some sort of military olympics in the fall of last year in Wuhan. I'm doubtful as the crackpot espousing this theory has led several anti-American theories in the past. But that's just the type of thing than any nut job with a keyboard and/or a Twitter account can throw out there, even though Twitter is banned in China.

For me, I'm tired of seeing fools on Facebook talking about how it was a Democrat conspiracy to take down Trump and they had these ignorant thoughts because of people (and I use that term loosely) like Limbaugh and Hannity and their soapbox, Fox News. In general, Fox will dupe their legions by disavowing science, providing opinion as fact and then sometimes just outright making shit up. Then you let those viewers loose on Facebook and look out. Even up to Tuesday or Wednesday of this past week, while the ENTIRE COUNTRY OF ITALY was on quarantine, they were STILL claiming it wasn't that bad and it's a media concoction and "even Dr. Drew" said the media should be held accountable. Well, Dr. Drew is a psychiatrist not a fucking doctor of infectious disease, so his opinion is about as valid as Cardi B's (my first Cardi-B reference in writing by the way). And if you want to believe these dopes, then you'd have to believe that all major sports organizations around the world, the government of Italy, Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong and China all want to negatively impact the POTUS at the expense of their own citizens, fans and wallets. Just ridiculous.




And the final bad part is that if we quarantine effectively (or implement social distance, etc), then we will flatten the infectious outbreak curve and not overwhelm the healthcare system which is what this all about. The virus is going to spread, there's no doubt, but we want to prevent an enormous spike that causes our hospitals to run out of beds, respirators, doctors, nurses, etc. And if the curve is indeed flattened, these dumb asses who are constantly espousing that this is an over reaction and we never needed to do it in the first place will, in their tiny, tiny minds, truly believe they were right. Since you can't prove a negative, we'll only have logic to refute them with and we know how that will go. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

The Market
The broader stock market started declining in late February as reports of Covid-19 became more common and cases started appearing outside of China. Over two plus weeks, the Dow dropped from the mid 29k's to the mid 21k's. That's massive. Basically the Dow went back to where it was mid-2017. Since Wednesday the 4th, the Dow dropped: 900, 300, then cratered 2,000 on Monday, up 1,200, down 1,500, and down 1,300 on Thursday which left Friday to be a very important day. Was it going to be a third day down or a move up that would signal (possibly) a bottom going into the weekend. Friday moves in a time like this are really important because so much information can come out over the weekend and if investors don't want to take the risk of holding securities over the weekend, Friday will be a sell-off. If the securities are too much of a value, they will accept the risk/reward tradeoff. Well, the market soared 1,900 on Friday which is very good news in my opinion. Sure, we'll have up and down days for the next month or so for sure, but getting things under control can bring investors back into the market.

For the stock pickers out there, where can you find value? Not oil companies with the Russia/Opec dispute that's flooding the market and cut oil from $60 to $30. Not airlines or cruise lines either. Or Disney, despite their launch of a channel. One compelling play could be Home Depot ($205) and Lowe's ($96.5). As folks are quarantined, I see many a honey-do list finally getting attacked. Netflix ($336) could get a boost as well. Some super markets may get a bump, but I don't have enough info on any one of them in particular to list it here.  Stay well my friends and wash your hands!