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Coronavirus - Macro Investment Aspects Only

The home for all non-political Coronavirus (Covid-19) discussions on The Lemon Fool
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This is the home for all non-political Coronavirus (Covid-19) discussions on The Lemon Fool
SalvorHardin
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Re: Coronavirus - Macro Investment Aspects Only

#342218

Postby SalvorHardin » September 23rd, 2020, 12:30 pm

odysseus2000 wrote:Do people have other suggestions?

Japanese smaller companies.

Most of the Japanese economy is highly inefficient when it comes to using paperwork and communications technology. Japan is not all high-tech gadgetry; for one thing it’s the biggest user of fax machines in the world and it uses them a lot. The coronavirus is driving the same changes in business operations and consumer preferences to those that we’re seeing in the Western World, but because of existing inefficiencies in the Japanese economy there is much more low-hanging fruit to be harvested.

“Japanese decry boomer-era tech as hospitals file coronavirus cases by fax”

https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/health-environment/article/3082907/japan-hospitals-still-use-fax-machines-coronavirus

Japanese business loves to use "Hanko"; signature stamps which must be physically imprinted on paper, instead of e-signatures or other alternatives. This means that many Japanese employees have still to go to the office purely to stamp documents. Not a good idea in the time of coronavirus. It also means that complex decisions requiring the approval of several people can take weeks to get everyone's Hanko stamp on the documents, much slower than in the rest of the developed world.

A couple of weeks ago I saw a presentation on the JPMorgan Japanese Smaller Companies’ website (no longer on there). The manager was talking about how in Japan it is the smaller companies which are driving the push to adopt more internet communications, with the larger companies being more constrained by traditional ways of doing business. Its largest investment is in a company whose electronic Hanko stamp has something like 80% of the online market.

"According to a survey released by Adobe K.K. in March, more than 60 percent of respondents said they had to go to their offices to check documents and stamp hanko during the time they were asked to work from home."

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/06/30/national/hanko-seal-alternatives/

I haven’t a clue about individual companies, I’ve just bought funds.

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Re: Coronavirus - Macro Investment Aspects Only

#342223

Postby Itsallaguess » September 23rd, 2020, 12:43 pm

odysseus2000 wrote:
..and limited progress on a Covid vaccine.


Limited progress?

I think they've already worked miracles to get to where they are as quickly as they have done with regard to vaccines....

Sir Patrick Vallance was as upbeat as I've seen him regarding the up-coming results from the various Phase 3 trials currently underway, and there's a good possibility that within 6 months we might have at least a limited supply of deliverable vaccine with which to prioritise to key workers, and there's a small chance that we might get a much wider general distribution than that, and if we agree that markets are forward looking then that sort of really short time-scale doesn't seem to me as being correctly described as 'limited progress'....

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

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Re: Coronavirus - Macro Investment Aspects Only

#342249

Postby odysseus2000 » September 23rd, 2020, 2:16 pm

Itsallaguess wrote:
odysseus2000 wrote:
..and limited progress on a Covid vaccine.


Limited progress?

I think they've already worked miracles to get to where they are as quickly as they have done with regard to vaccines....

Sir Patrick Vallance was as upbeat as I've seen him regarding the up-coming results from the various Phase 3 trials currently underway, and there's a good possibility that within 6 months we might have at least a limited supply of deliverable vaccine with which to prioritise to key workers, and there's a small chance that we might get a much wider general distribution than that, and if we agree that markets are forward looking then that sort of really short time-scale doesn't seem to me as being correctly described as 'limited progress'....

Cheers,

Itsallaguess


This article in the NYT describes vaccine progress:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/202 ... acker.html

One can make ones own appraisal of where we are in terms of vaccines.

Regards,

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Re: Coronavirus - Macro Investment Aspects Only

#342257

Postby odysseus2000 » September 23rd, 2020, 2:51 pm

dealtn wrote:
odysseus2000 wrote:Do people have other suggestions?



That you haven't just discovered this as the first person and that maybe it's already priced in?


Are you suggesting all of these sectors will not appreciate any more or that they are now at their zenith and are good short candidates?

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Re: Coronavirus - Macro Investment Aspects Only

#342259

Postby dealtn » September 23rd, 2020, 2:57 pm

odysseus2000 wrote:
dealtn wrote:
odysseus2000 wrote:Do people have other suggestions?



That you haven't just discovered this as the first person and that maybe it's already priced in?


Are you suggesting all of these sectors will not appreciate any more or that they are now at their zenith and are good short candidates?

Regards,


No. Just like at any other time some will rise, some will fall, some much more than others.

I don't think your "macro" list adds anything to the debate that can be considered new or insightful. The contribution from SalvorHardin below yours is the kind of new and insightful contribution that adds value here in my opinion.

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Re: Coronavirus - Macro Investment Aspects Only

#342339

Postby odysseus2000 » September 23rd, 2020, 7:19 pm

dealtn
No. Just like at any other time some will rise, some will fall, some much more than others.

I don't think your "macro" list adds anything to the debate that can be considered new or insightful. The contribution from SalvorHardin below yours is the kind of new and insightful contribution that adds value here in my opinion.


I am quite happy to be the poster that leads to other posts that you consider add value.

Regards,

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Re: Coronavirus - Macro Investment Aspects Only

#342341

Postby Itsallaguess » September 23rd, 2020, 7:32 pm

odysseus2000 wrote:
Itsallaguess wrote:
odysseus2000 wrote:
..and limited progress on a Covid vaccine.


Limited progress?

I think they've already worked miracles to get to where they are as quickly as they have done with regard to vaccines....

Sir Patrick Vallance was as upbeat as I've seen him regarding the up-coming results from the various Phase 3 trials currently underway, and there's a good possibility that within 6 months we might have at least a limited supply of deliverable vaccine with which to prioritise to key workers, and there's a small chance that we might get a much wider general distribution than that, and if we agree that markets are forward looking then that sort of really short time-scale doesn't seem to me as being correctly described as 'limited progress'....


This article in the NYT describes vaccine progress:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/science/coronavirus-vaccine-tracker.html

One can make ones own appraisal of where we are in terms of vaccines.


And from that article comes the following graphic showing vaccine progress -

Image

Let's remember that COVID-19 was only declared as a pandemic by the World Health Organisation on March 11th of this year.

That's just 29 weeks ago...

Given this, I fail to see how the phrase 'limited progress' can be justified when set against the above global vaccine programmes that have been stood up in such a short space of time, and if you want to go further and use the phrase when discussing potential macro investment influence, then we must be very near to the point where, with a fair wind, some ground-breaking news developments can't be too far away in this area given the trial bow-wave building up in the above chart....

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

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Re: Coronavirus - Macro Investment Aspects Only

#342362

Postby odysseus2000 » September 23rd, 2020, 9:08 pm

Let's remember that COVID-19 was only declared as a pandemic by the World Health Organisation on March 11th of this year.

That's just 29 weeks ago...

Given this, I fail to see how the phrase 'limited progress' can be justified when set against the above global vaccine programmes that have been stood up in such a short space of time, and if you want to go further and use the phrase when discussing potential macro investment influence, then we must be very near to the point where, with a fair wind, some ground-breaking news developments can't be too far away in this area given the trial bow-wave building up in the above chart....

Cheers,

Itsallaguess


I sincerely hope so, but until some thing is demonstrated to work with acceptable side effects I remain unconvinced.

I do hope that the many earlier claims that fell apart, will not be a recurring theme for these later trials.

My experience of biotech companies is that the sales and marketing folks optimism exceeds what the scientists on the front line deliver by a lot. Such folk may not make the wild optimistic claims of the politicians, but they are nevertheless in the business of getting stock prices up and the way they do that is by implying that success is almost upon us.

If any of these approaches gets anywhere we will see a re-rating of a whole lot of equities that would be immediate beneficiaries, but from my looking at price charts there is no sign of that at all.

Optimists will decide that science is close to a solution in record time, where as equity watchers like me and more importantly the big guys with big research departments will call it limited progress until we see something that works and then we will be out buying the equity of the wonder drug maker and all the other folk who will benefit.

Meanwhile investor and trader are focused on what is working for longs and that is stuff that assumes these difficult times will be with us for many more months. At the same time they are continuing to short business who will suffer in these hard times.

I hope I am completely wrong in my view as masks and all the restrictions are getting very old and worse the UK politicians are moving into dangerous territory using c19 as a rational for draconian measures with extortionate fines like the £10k ones they have recently announced, all without any parliamentary scrutiny.

There is now imho a serious political risk to UK equities based on what the government is doing and not doing, that is hurting the £ as were are rapidly approaching a time when the chancellor will have to extend payments to folk laid off through no fault of their own, or pay out a lot more in benefits as these folk lose their jobs.

Couple all of this with politicians operating under the veil of emergency legislation with no parliamentary over sight and it can get ugly fast.

Regards,

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Re: Coronavirus - Macro Investment Aspects Only

#342368

Postby Itsallaguess » September 23rd, 2020, 9:26 pm

odysseus2000 wrote:
I sincerely hope so, but until some thing is demonstrated to work with acceptable side effects I remain unconvinced.

I do hope that the many earlier claims that fell apart, will not be a recurring theme for these later trials.

My experience of biotech companies is that the sales and marketing folks optimism exceeds what the scientists on the front line deliver by a lot. Such folk may not make the wild optimistic claims of the politicians, but they are nevertheless in the business of getting stock prices up and the way they do that is by implying that success is almost upon us.

If any of these approaches gets anywhere we will see a re-rating of a whole lot of equities that would be immediate beneficiaries, but from my looking at price charts there is no sign of that at all.


Interesting perspective. Had to chuckle though, as I wonder if you'd be having the same doubts if Musk were running the trials...

The bottom line Ody, is that with regards to any vaccine-related macro benefits, your need for strong 'results-led' conviction would be likely to leave you missing out on any market-benefits of such announcements. Good news on this front it likely to reverberate around the world rather quickly, one would imagine...

Your choice, of course, but you were wanting to discuss macro influences whilst also wanting to discount the huge strides made in the current vaccine programmes, and I think it's a mistake to do that, and it reminds me of that quote from Interstellar a little -

Ody - "It's not possible.."

Global science - "No, it's necessary..."

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

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Re: Coronavirus - Macro Investment Aspects Only

#342375

Postby odysseus2000 » September 23rd, 2020, 9:55 pm

Interesting perspective. Had to chuckle though, as I wonder if you'd be having the same doubts if Musk were running the trials...

The bottom line Ody, is that with regards to any vaccine-related macro benefits, your need for strong 'results-led' conviction would be likely to leave you missing out on any market-benefits of such announcements. Good news on this front it likely to reverberate around the world rather quickly, one would imagine...

Your choice, of course, but you were wanting to discuss macro influences whilst also wanting to discount the huge strides made in the current vaccine programmes, and I think it's a mistake to do that, and it reminds me of that quote from Interstellar a little -

Ody - "It's not possible.."

Global science - "No, it's necessary..."

Cheers,

Itsallaguess


If any of these vaccines work then the folk in the know will be buying relevant equity before there is a public announcement.

That is the signal I am looking for and not seeing.

Clearly there will be plenty of false positives and indeed there have already been some, so that one has to see clear supportive action rather than jumping at every possible move like trout after flies.

In ideal conditions there will be many disappointments so that everyone will have lost faith and will read every announcement with a yawn. Then when everyone has given up something will be discovered.

The Spanish flu lasted from Feb 1918 to April 1920. One can argue that medical tech is orders of magnitude better, but on the flip side Corona virus have only been around about 60 years and this one was not named "novel" without due cause.

Science is rarely convenient for anyone and also rarely happens in the consistent and methodical ways portrayed in the movies or wished by the politicians or is as clear and convincing as the NYT shows, no matter how good the prose or how beautiful the graphs.

One current positive is that all the macro conditions are currently ugly and that may be enough to cause the chancellor to stop worrying about the £ and extend reliefs via the printing press and at the cost of more debt and that could give the FTSE a bounce.

Still I hope that I have this entirely wrong.

Regards,

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Re: Coronavirus - Macro Investment Aspects Only

#342427

Postby dealtn » September 24th, 2020, 8:46 am

odysseus2000 wrote:If any of these vaccines work then the folk in the know will be buying relevant equity before there is a public announcement.

That is the signal I am looking for and not seeing.


Even if your faith in insiders, and the price signal as a predictor of the future, is true (which I doubt, but that's irrelevant), a number of those pharma companies have said they will be doing the vaccine on a non-profit basis.

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Re: Coronavirus - Macro Investment Aspects Only

#342483

Postby odysseus2000 » September 24th, 2020, 12:05 pm

dealtn wrote:
odysseus2000 wrote:If any of these vaccines work then the folk in the know will be buying relevant equity before there is a public announcement.

That is the signal I am looking for and not seeing.


Even if your faith in insiders, and the price signal as a predictor of the future, is true (which I doubt, but that's irrelevant), a number of those pharma companies have said they will be doing the vaccine on a non-profit basis.


It will be great if they do and there are examples of pharma's doing this kind of thing, but there are also examples of them saying they would and still managing to make a lot of money in various ways that circumvent the statement.

AstraZeneca's share price e.g. has been volatile around the closing and then re-opening of trials following one patients bad reaction.

Regards,

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Re: Coronavirus - Macro Investment Aspects Only

#342494

Postby dealtn » September 24th, 2020, 12:23 pm

odysseus2000 wrote:
dealtn wrote:
odysseus2000 wrote:If any of these vaccines work then the folk in the know will be buying relevant equity before there is a public announcement.

That is the signal I am looking for and not seeing.


Even if your faith in insiders, and the price signal as a predictor of the future, is true (which I doubt, but that's irrelevant), a number of those pharma companies have said they will be doing the vaccine on a non-profit basis.


It will be great if they do and there are examples of pharma's doing this kind of thing, but there are also examples of them saying they would and still managing to make a lot of money in various ways that circumvent the statement.

AstraZeneca's share price e.g. has been volatile around the closing and then re-opening of trials following one patients bad reaction.

Regards,


This is true and I don't deny it. But are markets rational as a first order effect? Further is the rational response also to believe that some don't know of the non-profit motive and assume there is a profit one, as such the rational second order effect is to trade the (incorrect) direction driven behaviour of those assuming a profit motive etc.?

Markets are complex, and have different dynamics over different time frames. You will be aware of the quote about markets being both voting and weighing machines I suspect.

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Re: Coronavirus - Macro Investment Aspects Only

#342513

Postby odysseus2000 » September 24th, 2020, 1:11 pm

Interesting statement from the Chancellor:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgQZq2FOFJY

Ftse not liking it currently.

Regards,

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Re: Coronavirus - Macro Investment Aspects Only

#344707

Postby odysseus2000 » October 2nd, 2020, 10:00 pm

Asda sold by Walmart to two brothers from Blackburn:

https://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/n ... -takeover/

Amazing that there is enough confidence to buy this kind of people business in the middle of a pandemic.

Regards,

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Re: Coronavirus - Macro Investment Aspects Only

#344937

Postby redsturgeon » October 3rd, 2020, 5:28 pm

odysseus2000 wrote:Asda sold by Walmart to two brothers from Blackburn:

https://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/n ... -takeover/

Amazing that there is enough confidence to buy this kind of people business in the middle of a pandemic.

Regards,


You may not have noticed but supermarkets have been doing very well.

John

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Re: Coronavirus - Macro Investment Aspects Only

#344950

Postby odysseus2000 » October 3rd, 2020, 6:19 pm

redsturgeon wrote:
odysseus2000 wrote:Asda sold by Walmart to two brothers from Blackburn:

https://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/n ... -takeover/

Amazing that there is enough confidence to buy this kind of people business in the middle of a pandemic.

Regards,


You may not have noticed but supermarkets have been doing very well.

John


Yes, it appears that people are not eating, nor cleaning nor buying presents, unless they happen to go to Aldi or Lidl as their customers seem to be doing all of this.

Maybe Asda will become more like Aldi & Lidl under the new owners.

Regards,

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Re: Coronavirus - Macro Investment Aspects Only

#345265

Postby odysseus2000 » October 5th, 2020, 9:01 am

Cineworld to temporarily close all its UK and US cinemas:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... bs-at-risk

If this ever happens I wonder if the cinemas will ever re-open. If all the staff are laid off, re-staffing for any restart will be expensive.

Regards,

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Re: Coronavirus - Macro Investment Aspects Only

#345294

Postby JamesMuenchen » October 5th, 2020, 10:35 am

dealtn wrote:
odysseus2000 wrote:Do people have other suggestions?



That you haven't just discovered this as the first person and that maybe it's already priced in?


I think that's a bit naïve.

You could have bought Zoom, for instance, at $200 in June. Or at $300 in August. It's now about $480.

You can be late to the party and still have a thoroughly good time :)

SalvorHardin wrote:Japanese smaller companies.
...
Japanese business loves to use "Hanko"; signature stamps which must be physically imprinted on paper, instead of e-signatures or other alternatives. This means that many Japanese employees have still to go to the office purely to stamp documents. Not a good idea in the time of coronavirus. It also means that complex decisions requiring the approval of several people can take weeks to get everyone's Hanko stamp on the documents, much slower than in the rest of the developed world.

A couple of weeks ago I saw a presentation on the JPMorgan Japanese Smaller Companies’ website (no longer on there). The manager was talking about how in Japan it is the smaller companies which are driving the push to adopt more internet communications, with the larger companies being more constrained by traditional ways of doing business. Its largest investment is in a company whose electronic Hanko stamp has something like 80% of the online market.

"According to a survey released by Adobe K.K. in March, more than 60 percent of respondents said they had to go to their offices to check documents and stamp hanko during the time they were asked to work from home."

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/06/30/national/hanko-seal-alternatives/

I haven’t a clue about individual companies, I’ve just bought funds.


I'm not sure it follows that the JSCs would be the beneficiaries there.

A less esoteric bet might be DocuSign or Adobe.

As for buying Japanese funds, investors should be aware of "the Tokyo Whale"
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... st-brokers
The BOJ started buying ETFs in 2010, with Governor Haruhiko Kuroda later accelerating purchases as part of an unprecedented stimulus package aimed at revitalizing the economy. Shingo Ide, chief equity strategist at NLI Research Institute, estimates the central bank’s accumulated ETF purchases since then reached 33.9 trillion yen ($315 billion) as of the end of April, equal to about 90% of the country’s total ETF market.

So a policy change could be a risk. It might be unlikely, but it's there.

Somehow my attempts at investing in Japan have always been lackluster, so I tend to avoid now. But I wish you good luck with yours.

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Re: Coronavirus - Macro Investment Aspects Only

#346766

Postby SalvorHardin » October 10th, 2020, 4:45 pm

JamesMuenchen wrote:I'm not sure it follows that the JSCs would be the beneficiaries there.

A less esoteric bet might be DocuSign or Adobe.

As for buying Japanese funds, investors should be aware of "the Tokyo Whale"
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... st-brokers
The BOJ started buying ETFs in 2010, with Governor Haruhiko Kuroda later accelerating purchases as part of an unprecedented stimulus package aimed at revitalizing the economy. Shingo Ide, chief equity strategist at NLI Research Institute, estimates the central bank’s accumulated ETF purchases since then reached 33.9 trillion yen ($315 billion) as of the end of April, equal to about 90% of the country’s total ETF market.

So a policy change could be a risk. It might be unlikely, but it's there.

Somehow my attempts at investing in Japan have always been lackluster, so I tend to avoid now. But I wish you good luck with yours.

Thanks. I've never invested much in Japan until the last few months. DocuSign and Abode don't have much of a share of the Japanese Hanko e-signature market, and they already be too late.

In the 2020 AGM Presentation video, the manager of JPMorgan Japan Smaller Companies talked at some length about Bengo4.com ("Bengo Shi"), the trust's largest shareholding, pointing out that it is the pioneer in Hanko e-signatures. Its "CloudSign" service has a market share of roughly 80%. His AGM presentation can now be found at the link below; the talk about Bengo4.com starts at 8 minutes 25 seconds.

https://am.jpmorgan.com/gb/en/asset-management/per/products/jpmorgan-japan-smaller-companies-trust-plc-ordinary-shares-gb0003165817

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/05/24/business/corporate-business/digital-signatures-japanese-firm-hanko/

A few years ago Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe shiften policy to get Japanese companies to improve corporate governance, become more shareholder friendly and to deploy their large cash balances more productively. He also encouraged western-style shareholder activism. I first found about this policy shift in early 2018, shortly before the launch in 2018 of the AVI Japan Opportunity Trust, an investment trust specifically intended to invest in Japanese Smaller Companies and shake them up. The Barrons' article below about the success and failure of "Abenomics" has quite a bit about recent changes in Japanese corporate governance and shareholder activism.

https://www.barrons.com/articles/shinzo-abe-had-big-ambitions-for-japan-here-is-where-abenomics-succeeded-and-failed-51599062403

Although I didn't buy shares in AVI Japan Opportunity, it did give me an investment idea. Much of the Japanese economy is much less high-tech and dynamic than we are led to believe and there's a lot of low-hanging fruit there with an increasing political will to push through changes. IMHO smaller companies are much better placed to take advantage; they are less held back by bureaucracy, traditionalism and the seniority rules which dominate employment practices in Japan.

Eventually I bought some JPMorgan Japanese Smaller Companies to get myself to pay more attention to Japan. When the coronavirus hit last March, my interest in Sumo Wrestling ultimately caused me to increase my investment (the government's support for the Sumo Association refusing to cancel the major Sumo tournament got me looking much more closely at Japan). Serendipity strikes!

(If anyone's interested, the Sumo is covered by NHK World, with daily highlights on Sky channel 507. Next tournament starts 8th November)


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