You could be right. An entire generation has been conditioned to buy the dip so you're certainly not alone. All I can say is that the economy is bigger than the Fed. Eventually this ends. I don't know if this one takes out the Fed or not, but I'm cautious here.

for the sake of an argument, let's say "the bug departs" tomorrow. What are left with? a 2% economy, 27T of debt load, and one of the most overvalued stock market in history pre-pandemic. Then what, just asking?

Very well stated! Is Ed, as managing editor, stating the official RV or Raoul’s thesis?

Right on Sean! Well stated. People who are not "smart enough to stop going out on their own" are nature's way of culling the herd.

Paul, I hear you on this. But my message is that I don’t know any more than the average person about epidemiology. And if it was clear to me what was likely to happen, then that means it’s not rocket science. I have no special insight. I was just putting 2 and 2 together. As to the European outperformance, I was wrong. It was fleeting, and only because of the currency. And it could also be wrong that there’s no trade-off between public health and the economy. Maybe, not locking down will mean better economic (and market) outcomes. I accept that. And if I am wrong, I will say so.

Ed, keep doin' what you're doin'. Your strong opinions—on Covid and other topics—are exceptionally well informed. It is wonderful to hear your fact-based thought process. And kudos to owning up when your opinions prove wrong.

Ed, I think you've followed the current mainstream covid headlines a little too much just recently, I have to say. It seems to me that the hype could affect markets but the death count is not supporting a calamity. I had a look at a few news reports and the focus is on the daily case counts not the daily death rates, click bait news. When there was a daily death rate discussion they mentioned that the virus was mutating (alarmist news) to the March strain and it was changing to something more contagious however, transforming to probably something less lethal. It's easy to pick and choose a graph that tells the narrative when one wants to hype the news. The dynamic link below provides stats on various countries excess death rates since the beginning of 2020. Please have a look at the headline economies like France, UK and Germany, USA and then all of them, you might find that a lot of excess deaths are also in the negative% in some countries. The clue to look for is are hospitals overburdened and some reports admitted they were not. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-p-scores-by-age?tab=chart&stackMode=absolute&country=AUT-0~BEL-0~BGR-0~CHL-0~HRV-0~CZE-0~DNK-0~England%20%26%20Wales-0~EST-0~FIN-0~FRA-0~DEU-0~GRC-0~HUN-0~ISL-0~ISR-0~ITA-0~LVA-0~LTU-0~LUX-0~NLD-0~NZL-0~Northern%20Ireland-0~NOR-0~POL-0~PRT-0~Scotland-0~SVK-0~SVN-0~KOR-0~ESP-0~SWE-0~CHE-0~USA-0&region=World Even though deaths are a lagging (2-4 week) indicator the only real stat that matters is excess deaths because there are too many variables e.g. cross jurisdictions, health systems diagnosis variability, allowed treatments and mutation. The USA charts presented in your video shows 3 waves crests in the daily infection and a coming 3rd wave in daily death rate going in opposite directions if you were to join the peaks. This is charting analysis which you guys talk about week and in week out, it should be a strong hint that its overhyped. The biggest risk is to the economy with more shutdowns (this is another own goal). There has been a lot of discussion about how the Covid tests being not very valid methodology of positively identifying actively infectious people. In fact prior to the pandemic it was standard on any virus to have to perform two slightly different tests for sensitivity and sensibility. This basically representing possible inclusion followed by a certain exclusion test. Why the change for this pandemic? As well as the fact that the PCR tests pick up anyone with remnants of RNA and just plain false positive results. To me the real narrative is probably that the testing methodology picks up a lot of asymptomatic people that actually aren't asymptomatic. i.e. The error count in the positive test results can be well higher that 80%. That's a story that changes the whole headline to (kicking an own goal). I know that this doesn't change your 3 day market narrative because we buy the rumour and sell the news but your 6 week forecast may need to be revised to allow for narrative adjustments based on facts prevailing. Ed to me the main 6 week news to me is I think the odds of a surprise Trump victory has gone up as of late. I would be keen to get your views on how that would affect markets post 3rd of November and in 6 weeks. Bond market up, stock market up? What's priced in?

Only stat that matters is hospitalizations. Don' t believe health departments are shutting things down due to older people dying (outside of rules for nursing homes). They start to shut things down when the hospitals get full. That is what is impacting local economies, not the number of people dying - particularly as medical techniques have improved these numbers.

I agree hospitalisations is a stat that should be looked at in more detail but i'm not sure how much that would slow down the economy. What I notice is when I walk on the street there's more people asking for handouts, while we can worry about getting hospitalised by coronavirus some people are worried about starving and I'm guessing its going to get worse. That's a red flag to me, where's the right balance?

Naaaa- a US citizen

Why would they after seeing the disastrous results of the first one? And after having a better understanding of the virus?

..... and today at the time of writing the VIX is down 7.62% on yesterdays close. The new short premium, short vol option positions established yesterday already doing nicely on day one, and without a single thought to Trump, Politics, News, Twitter, Covid, Vaccinces, and so it goes on using nothing more than mathmatical probabilities and statistics. So much easier to make decisions if all the other stuff is simply ignored, tuned out.

and before anyone suggests I'm cherry picking to make a case. That's not the case I fully except a single days market activity in itself does not mean much, except to suggest that if even just one person on this forum starts to think there might, just might be something in Short Vol option trading and in turn starts the journey of learning this post will have served it's purpose.

Because that is what coronaviruses Tend to do. They want to survive but can’t do that if they become more deadly.

Given Trump’s stated position on coronavirus, I give any (early or targeted) national US lockdown scenario a low probability weighting

Believe a national shutdown has a low probability whoever wins next week. But to Ed's point, if case counts grow leading to full hospitals, then health departments will be forced to act. This will be a wet blanket on the economy as people will self-select to not get out as much and governments continue to put constraints on industries that require social interaction. As investors, we need to ask ourselves how to play this highly possible scenario. And it may be a different game plan than in March.

2-4 weeks will end up being 8-16 weeks, unless unrest breaks the lockdowns

I hope Ash has held private keys, run his own node etc. in the past. Otherwise it's a case of the blind leading the blind in terms of education.

Agree. Excellent analysis. Pandemic is driving markets and rather than making it about politics, more important to make it about numbers and government closures and how these actions impact industries/business. As investors, have to try to predict the future and with Covid, what will be the continuing drag as it cycles up again. As far as Asia, may be time to look at investments in those markets as Taiwan, China, Vietnam, and South Korea are seeing improvements in their economy.

Since you've been in public health for 30 years, maybe you can enlighten us. Why are masks and lockdowns the only topics of discussion? There are a dozen or more things people can do to mitigate the virus, but we never hear a peep about them. I won't write a book here, but one example is vitamin D levels that have been strongly associated with better outcomes, yet total silence from the health authorities.

I don't know if that is something he needs to tell. Its up to him in my opinion (whether he tells). I believe he objective in how he presents everything.

I'd guess it's GBTC

Shocked Ash doesn't hold any of his own bitcoin...

If you've not already signed the Great Barrington Convention, you should definitely consider doing so as it pretty much represents the focussed protection approach.

I make the argument it is about hospitalizations and not deaths. If hospitals become full, as they are doing in Tennessee and some other states, health officials are not going to stand back and say "average age is 78 and 94% comorbidity" so let the pandemic run. They will start to close things up (as this is their job to protect the public) so the disease doesn't overwhelm the hospital system. I am surprised that people have not realized this yet and keep arguing death statistics. Full hospitals = business closures = declining economy = layoffs. This cycle will continue until policies are put in place like uniform mask wearing (which has worked in Asia) and citizens following the rules like social distancing so that people can do business thus staying in business without the health department being forced to step in. As the widely quoted head of infectious disease at Vanderbilt just stated to the general public, "stop whining and put on your masks".

Can give you one. Nashville now has 5% hospital capacity available having crossed the red line of 20%. So network is getting stressed and haven't hit the cold weather yet.

Plus almost 50% of the country is living below the poverty now due to business insolvencies etc.

tell that to Tony , he's repeating trump lines . i want to give him more credit but really ,,,

Cris, it applies to both, really.

A lot of great FREE info here....FIFY

It’s not Ash though. We need Tony to add balance. He has a trader’s mentality and he has a non-consensus view about markets right now. I appreciate hearing it.