The Lemon Fool

As for this stupid panic buying, it will obviously die down in a week or two because there will be so much product on people's shelves that there will be no room for more. We are not talking about diarrhea (or however it is spelt) for goodness' sake!

dspp

Tens of millions will be infected? You mean the entire population? We are only about 65 million I think, all told. Really? We need to get some sense of proportion.

Dod

Mike Burry (The Big Short)

"With Covid-19, the hysteria appears to me worse than the reality, but after the stampede, it won’t matter whether what started it justified it.”

(I agree with the sentiment)

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/big-shor ... 44573.html

And, on the influence of passive funds...

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/04/the-big ... ubble.html

Scottish Government think a worse case scenario is 80% of the population getting it, 4% hospitalised, 1% dead. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-scot ... s-51698000

I expect to get it, but worry how to delay the infection of 90yo mother until her current extreme back pain abates. She is currently unable to lie in a bed...

Dod101 wrote:As for this stupid panic buying, it will obviously die down in a week or two because there will be so much product on people's shelves that there will be no room for more. We are not talking about diarrhea (or however it is spelt) for goodness' sake!

dspp

Tens of millions will be infected? You mean the entire population? We are only about 65 million I think, all told. Really? We need to get some sense of proportion.

Dod

We have an irresponsible PM saying such things as

"I must level with you, the British public. More families – many more families – are going to lose loved ones before their time.”

And a government with a planning scenario of 1 in 10 of us needing hospitalisation ....about 6.6 million then. I wonder how many free beds we have in the UK (from a total of 170,000)?

I'm concerned over the extent/speed of the falls in the market and equally concerned that dividends which we Hypers carefully try to nurture might be rebased as a result.

JohnB wrote:Scottish Government think a worse case scenario is 80% of the population getting it, 4% hospitalised, 1% dead. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-scot ... s-51698000

I expect to get it, but worry how to delay the infection of 90yo mother until her current extreme back pain abates. She is currently unable to lie in a bed...

4% x 80% x 4.66 million.....or ~150,000 Scottish people.

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/coronavirus-uk-nhs-beds

"On Monday, Scotland’s chief medical officer Caroline Calderwood predicted that up to 250,000 people might be hospitalised if a major Covid-19 or coronavirus scenario materialises in the country."

(So, that's an extra 100,000 beds then on top of the 4%x80% etc....think of a number, any number and throw it out there!)

Number of acute care beds...13,400.

Which is why BJ is warning people that many of their loved ones will die...often without access to the high dependency care they need. I loathe him, but he's hardly irresponsible here.

So worse case scenario. What is the likelihood of that happening? You (monabri), as an intelligent person I assume, must know that statistics can prove anything. You are building probabilities upon probabilities. Just a load of typical scare stories I am afraid. Boris, on the other had seems to me to be perfectly sober and realistic about the situation.

Thank goodness we have him rather than Comrade Corbyn who would blame it all on who do you think? In fact this whole episode could be the making of Boris

Dod

Yes, I do realise that stats can be manipulated! I'm far from convinced by the hysteria surrounding Covid 19.

The numbers are "not mine".I was just doing the maths to see the bed numbers required based on the scenario in the link posted by JohnB. I believe the numbers that have been quoted are no better than guesses....time will tell.

As I mentioned a few posts earlier in this thread, I agree with Mike Burry's sentiments.

It's the current media driven frenzy...I'm beginning to wish they would go back to endless debates on Brexit!

As for Boris, It's all very well saying we will lose loved ones to Covid 19 but is he also going to stand up and explain that we might lose more people, of all ages, to the flu where the vaccine is only partially effective?

Dod101 wrote:
So worse case scenario. What is the likelihood of that happening?

You (monabri), as an intelligent person I assume, must know that statistics can prove anything. You are building probabilities upon probabilities.

Just a load of typical scare stories I am afraid.

I'm not sure you're grasping the full potential of this virus Dod.

Iran are digging mass graves -

Satellite images of mass graves in the city of Qom suggest Iran’s coronavirus epidemic is even more serious than the authorities are admitting.

The pictures, first published by the New York Times, show the excavation of a new section in a cemetery on the northern fringe of Iran’s holy city in late February

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/12/coronavirus-iran-mass-graves-qom

We're simply not going to be able to ignore this issue away....

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

Market falls are beneficial for people who have a long term view on equity investment and who are continuing to build their portfolios and/or reinvest dividends and cheaper prices.

Assuming the world doesn't come to an end, I am confident that Kone (elevators) will be much more profitable in years to come; that Reckitt (Durex, among many product lines) will be much more profitable; that Spirax Sarco Engineering will be more profitable. etc. etc. The first two are on very attractive free cash flow yields. We go through economic cycles and there are good years and bad years. Buying at a good price gets you a stake in a profitable business and you reap the benefits when conditions improve. I looked at the share price and dividend performance of Guinesss and Scottish Mortgage, among others, in the 1930s and it was quite interesting.

I will have a fair bit of cash available in April and intend to go on a buying spree.

Best wishes

Mark.

This is of course Share Ideas not one of those other boards so I will not develop the C virus theme. I am surprised no one has mentioned Dignity yet.
Might be a good bet.

Dod

Dod101 wrote:
Tens of millions will be infected? You mean the entire population? We are only about 65 million I think, all told. Really? We need to get some sense of proportion.

Dod

Dod,

I have got a sense of proportion, do the maths.

The data so far suggests that CV19 is quite good at transmission. The basic reproduction number, i.e. the number of other people an infected person ordinarily infects, is between 2-3. This is very similar to typical flu and that ordinarily affects about half the population in a typical UK flu year. Unfortunately the average mortality rate for CV19 appears so far to be approximately 1%, about 10x that of a very bad flu year.

The wiki on CV19 is worth keeping an eye on, especially the little graph of "case fatality by age group".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%8 ... s_pandemic
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_reproduction_number

So 66m UK population x 50% = 33m infections in first year
So 33m UK infected x 1% = 330,000 additional deaths in the first year

I am hopeful that the measures being taken around the world, most especially those that were taken in China that bought about 6-weeks of transmission delay, have time-shifted the peak season into the northern hemisphere Summer months. This is likely to 1) reduce transmission rates, and 2) reduce 'normal' hospital workloads, thereby increasing resources/CV19-patient and so reducing mortality. Remember that a typical annual flu, with vaccination and the lower mortality rate, can at its peak swamp the winter operational capacity of the UK NHS.

However I also think that this CV19 is now likely to become endemic in the global human population, and that as it (naturally) mutates so we are likely to get annual strains washing around the world. Hopefully within two years we will have an annual CV19 strain-of-the-year vaccine. What we really need to be worried about is if a more lethal strain were to emerge, there is no reason that mortality rate will always be 1% in every year. However these things tend to become less serious with time rather than more serious, but sometimes mother nature rolls a set of 1's on the probability dice. But that is the future.

regards, dspp

Given the volumes of peoples I have just witnessed in Tesco, Sainsbury's and Morrisons, in ordinary times I would expect o be seeing Buy notes issued by the sell side investment community!

The car washers were certainly stretched and busy earning all those £10 notes!

No I'm not panicking yet, and I suspect I am past the time that it makes any sense to panic. With a reasonable cash cushion I have started to drip feed into the market - favouring funds and ITs with large capital value global companies. The virus seems to have relatively mild effects on the younger fit populace, so after a blip downwards, I think it should not affect world productive activity. Quite unlike War or Spanish Flu.

I've got near to panicking a couple of times, e.g. when markets fell by 10%.

I was fully invested. What I have tended to do has been to reduce a couple of what I perceive as higher risk growth orientated IT's and re-direct the proceeds into more defensive trusts. That resulted in me adding to PHP, ULVR, MATE, FGT & MCT.

PHP= Primary Health Properties
MATE= JP Morgan Multi-Asset trust
FGT = Finsbury Growth & Inc trust (quality UK stocks)
MCT = Middlefield Canadian trust (high yielding)

I have sold my IAG shares. I don't know whether they'll be a winner or loser. But think there will be far fewer airlines in the world by the time this is over. Ditto travelcos. Holding everything else.

Gryff

Dod101 wrote:This is of course Share Ideas not one of those other boards so I will not develop the C virus theme. I am surprised no one has mentioned Dignity yet.
Might be a good bet.
Dod

Aren't the regulators are casting a close eye over funeral costs and haven't funerals been banned in Italy?

Yes I think they are. My suggestion was not really intended to be taken too seriously. Dignity is under an investigation, probably along with the other FDs as far I recall.

Dod

BobGe wrote:Aren't the regulators are casting a close eye over funeral costs and haven't funerals been banned in Italy?

This did get me thinking about other pricing and other products.

I was recently stranded overseas when Flybe collapsed. I think our flight was one of the last to leave the UK and I think a plane half an hour later didn't fly. We flew as normal and I didn't know until after we'd arrived and left the airport. I was in the Netherlands and looked at flights from KLM back to the UK, which were being quoted at 440 Euros online instead of the more usual 150 Euros for one person, one way and with no hold baggage. The flights I was looking at were almost a week away and I don't think you would ordinarily pay anything like 440 Euros if you booked with a week to go. (I normally book further in advance so it's hard to know.) I do not know how their automated system prices flights. (However, EasyJet did a very cheap option - albeit to a different airport. Even with a three-figure taxi bill, the EasyJet option was better.)

Uber has a 'surge pricing' model so you will pay x amount (i.e 1.4x) more for your taxi at busy periods, such as a Friday evening shortly before Christmas when many people are going to Christmas parties. How do companies price products in general? Is much of it automated? Will prices increase in peak periods of demand? What about seasonal sales and prices?

Best wishes

Mark.