COVID-19 Update Tulare Co Cal. April 4, 2020 as of 12:36:37 PM PDT 107 - Total positive cases 17 - Travelers 64 - Person to Person/Contact 26 - Unknown/Under Investigation 5 - Recovered Cases 5 - Deaths 219 - Under self-quarantine and being monitored by Tulare County Public Health officials

This is from Tulare Co - CA - Sad to say we got our first reported death today. It was cool and wet last week, most of the week we had highs in the mid-'60s - It will be warming up this week and will be 80 by next Sunday, I'm hoping this will help. . March 28, 2020 as of 3:17:55 PM PDT 29 - Total positive cases 15 - Travelers 7 - Person to Person/Contact 7 - Unknown/Under Investigation 1 - Recovered Cases 1 - Deaths 124 - Under self-quarantine and being monitored by Tulare County Public Health officials. Age Groups 1 - Ages 0 - 17 5 - Ages 18 - 25 11 - Ages 26 - 40 3 - Ages 41 - 64 9 - Ages 65+ Source. https://tchhsa.org/eng/index.cfm/public-health/covid-19-updates-novel-coronavirus/

Las Vegas here: no 'break out' here yet. There are few cases. The big hospital that I very well know t is calm still. Even calmer than usual.

These episodic updates are INVALUABLE, thank you Raoul and Julian! Especially insightful to see you "play out" your thought process with each other. Great stuff in these unprecedented times.

Virus is not done until we have a vaccine or heard immunity (about 80% of population gets it), If it is heat dependent, it means it fizzles in the summer but can come back in the fall and winter. Julian, are you recommending Raoul's dollar trade or not? it is unclear from the video as it seems you hope it doesn't happen.

Reporting from Miami, Florida. Spoke to a nurse a week ago and she said they are prepared but are not seeing any surge in cases. It might be different this week, will try to update again.

Surgeon here in Napa/ SF Bay Area in very large medical group with largest # C19 cases in US. Santa Clara and San Jose (Silicon Valley) and Oakland hospitals filling up fast despite rapidly expanding ICU and floor beds, but not yet full capacity. Other hospitals with smaller number of patients. We are preparing for surge of cases in next couple weeks well beyond even expanded capacity. Critical shortage of PPEs a huge concern. All elective surgery stopped last week. Only life threatening surgery currently and 90% clinic visits virtual. Unprecedented! Mark in Napa

any thoughts on all the new hires in retail? tia

I’m losing track of the trade recommendations. Flash updates are handy but I think you need to start updating the trade portfolio document much more regularly so there is one centralised location to see all the current trade recommendations in one place for both Julian and Raoul including whatever is in flash updates. Especially important in fast moving markets as everyone has their eyeballs in so many different places looking at many different data points such as right now.

Thanks for this update Julian!! As a fairly new RV subscriber, I have a hard time grasping the EuroDollar shortage concept. Anyone have a good explanation video out there? Maybe it’s because I’m influenced by the popular view of most gold bugs. By being taught the opposite view, it is quite hard to have this shift in beliefs. Classical goldbugs believe that QE will weaken the USD. Until the point of collapse. However even in GFC we have seen that USD is continuing the long term uptrend against the Euro. By subscribing to RV I ‘ve learned about the strong dollar from Raoul and Brent Johnson. Thanks to them, bit’s and pieces start falling together from a presentation by Diederick Schmull which I attended last year. https://youtu.be/R8t3lp02Mu0 Yet I still have to understand it fully. Yes, there is a shortage in dollar liquidity. When the Fed is printing, why wouldn't that minimize the shortage? The political powers are advocating for a weaker dollar, which is good for the export industry. For what its worth, Trump was even advocating it. Which tools do they have at their disposal to weaken the dollar? The views of the gold bugs can still be valid, the gold price can move higher. Yet that seems to be applicable later on in the cycle, after the sell off. Is there any good source to learn more about (Kondartieff’s) cycles? It seems that could be an interesting roadmap. https://twitter.com/HenrikZeberg/status/1147408776208756736?s=20 On the topic of FX plays. What is Raoul’s outlook on the Chinese Yuan against the USD? There is so much information on RV. And things are changing rather quickly. Where to start? I would love to see a macro trend crash course, to get my knowledge up to speed. To be able to see what lies in the waters ahead.

Julian, I've been speaking with either friends or friends of friends who are nurses, and here is what I have gotten: 1-Tokyo (where I live): Things are slow, according to a couple of the nurses I've talked to (while they do elective normally, have not been mobilized for ICU). We've had a warm, wet winter--if it wasn't 15-20C (and clear) then it was rainy. 2-Bay area seems to be blowing up, according to the nurses and nurse practitioners (again, friend of friend) there. Microclimates influencing things, lack of sunlight, or something else? Dunno. For those who are skeptical about the temperature effect, the most recent paper I have seen points to both temperature and humidity, at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3551767 YMMV.

Has anyone read any particularly good accounts of the Weimar Republic? Or any of the other hyperinflation stories? I would like to develop an understanding of what happened there in order to watch for signposts as we transition from deflation to whatever comes next. Thanks!

Are you still long dollar? Or is it not worth the risk/reward now? I am in UUP still.

We desperately need app notifications for new posts.

Julian, wonderful video. Some sense of hope was refreshing. What do you think of long dated calls on SLV? Jan '21? They are pretty cheap.

Hi Julian great update as usual. I see that there is a lot of confusion on your dollar position and Raoul‘s dollar position. I’ve been with you guys for a while now and I understand that you don’t always agree and I see it as a good thing, I like the fact that you have a more tactical trading approach and Raoul tends to be more long-term in general. I took one look at Raoul’s short GBP trade and at the current extreme I couldn’t get my head around this trade, yet I have traded it short term to the downside on daily upside extremes and it’s worked out well. Yet, I have not held a leveraged position short more than a few hours. I was glad to see your update today and your position lined up with my views that we are at extremes now on the dollar trade. I have my own framework, you have your own framework, and Raul has his, that’s the way it should be. The trade recommendations are great but I am here more to learn from both of your processes so I can fine tune my own process, to me that’s what it’s all about. I have to manage my own risk and trade my own personality. I live in Central CA COVID update we had 3 cases on Monday of last week, we now have 12 as of Sunday March 22, 2020. It’s been in the low 60’s most of the week here. Hopefully it starts to warm up and we see cases start to slow if it’s weather dependent, this is a rural area, we all drive and not many use public transportation so maybe this will help keep transmission low as well.

Hi Julian when you say we won't see yields higher for a while what time frame are you talking about here? As I understand eventually you see nominal yields (but not real) going higher over the next 5 year+?

Thank you, Julian, and Raoul for your consistent updates. I'm more pessimistic than both you and Raoul about the virus. I think the contagion, the quarantines, and the accompanying economic downturn will last at least until December and perhaps even into 2021. 1) I'm not sure if the virus really has a strong seasonal dependence. It still spreads very quickly in Singapore and Hong Kong and the 2nd most infected Chinese province is the southern province of Guangdong. All of these are tropical environments. Here's an interactive map of Covid-19 infections from the Univ. of Washington: https://hgis.uw.edu/virus/ There's still a reasonable amount of sub-tropical and tropical countries with a large amount of cases. The lack of outbreaks in tropical countries might be due to measurement bias and demographics. Countries near the equator tend to have poorer healthcare systems, less resources for mass testing, and younger populations. So that may explain the lack of cases so far. In the next few weeks, I'm thinking we may see an explosion of cases in Brazil, Malaysia, Indonesia, and India. I think the reason why LA hasn't had as big of an outbreak as NYC or Seattle has more to do with population density rather than climate. Even though LA county and NYC have similar population size, LA is extremely spread out and people drive cars more than use public transportation. NYC is dense and public transport is widely used. I'm not sure about Seattle's population density or Florida's population density. 2) I'm also thinking the virus will last pretty much until we get a vaccine (9-18 months) or we all get immunity from being infected. China, Hong Kong, and South Korea have slowed the new case count to a trickle, but once the quarantine is loosened to help the economy, the cases will explode again either from residents or overseas visitors. Then those countries will have to clampdown and hunker down again. There's the possibility that quarantines in non-East Asian countries won't work as effectively. I lived in East Asia for an extended period of time. People there tend to follow government orders more willingly, have more tolerance for heavy-handed government actions, and be more vigilant when it comes to guarding against disease (look at the difference in face mask culture between East Asia and the rest of the world). Meanwhile here in the West, there is a significant minority of young people who are ignoring the shelter-in-place orders. I personally know a few medical students in California that insist on maintaining their Spring Break plans of traveling around the world. Their response when I told them that this is a public health crisis was that "old people can just go hide, why should this interfere with my life?". CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT????????? Here's an article from the WSJ that basically says what I'm saying: https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-generational-war-is-brewing-over-coronavirus-11584437401 This article details how the streets of Hong Kong are coming back to life as young people can't take self-isolation anymore. They want to go hangout with their friends and go to restaurants and clubs. Simultaneously in the past few days, Hong Kong reported an increase in the rate of infection as people started to go back outside again. So I'm thinking the loosening of the quarantine and the rise in the rate of new cases in Hong Kong are causally related. They're going to have to re-tighten quarantine again and keep it that way until we immunize everyone or lose to the virus. Not sure if you agree that this crisis will last for another 9 to 18 months rather than 3 or 6 months, but if so, how does this change our next moves? Sorry for the long read. P.S. Just want to mention that not all young people are this irresponsible. It's a small minority, but even a small minority matters in times like these. I'm doing my best to make them understand the potential consequences of their actions.

At 15:30, Julian seems to suggest the dollar is at "cycle high" and that it could be a "tremendously positive" sign going forward. So I am interpreting that as, Julian is assigning a higher probability for the dollar to move down than up. That is certainly opposite of Raoul's strong conviction that it would move up. Central banks are certainly quite aggressive. If the swap lines they have set up works, then Julian's view might come true. Helpful to hear two different views. Am I interpreting all this correctly?

The warm weather theory does not seem to hold. It is probably more a function of not testing. As for Florida, this graphic seems to indicate that FL has an atypically high level of illness - https://healthweather.us/

How do you feel about leverages etfs like JNUG that track junior gold some silver miners? It has blown up -95% from 93ish to 3.50ish in the past few weeks. With oil so low could the miners see enough of a bump to move the needle here?

Julian: Gold? Didn’t we get stopped out at 1495? What is the plan here?

What a massive contrast between Raoul on his RV daily briefing, where the talk is all about more risk, social disruption, no supply, demand or consumption, possible massive further equity downside, no buyers in sight and Julian here talking about preparing for equity purchases, the dollar possibly peaking, central banks bringing on the cavalry at high speed, etc. I’m now confused as to your message. Do you fundamentally disagree? Are you hedging? Clarity please.

One of the very few authority in this field, Professor Yuen Kwok-yung in Hong Kong, has said we need to fight until the temperature rises to 25 celsius, ideally above 30 celsius. When looking at data (https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries) and comparing Hong Kong, Taiwan (low temperature, strong social distancing, wearing mask) and Singapore, Thailand (high temperature, relatively weak social distancing until last week, not wearing mask), the high temperature is likely to be helpful because the number of cases adjusted for population in latter is not significantly higher than former. At the same time, comparing Japan and UK (constitutional monarchy, no mass testing) or comparing Hong Kong, Taiwan and Italy, Spain, obviously social distancing and wearing mask is very helpful.

I really object to people praising China for managing this situation well. We wouldn't be in this situation if it weren't for China. That first animal to human transmission occurred in October and they covered it up for nearly three months in order to accommodate the party political meeting. China is directly responsible for unleashing what is rapidly turning into a global holocaust, and to allow them to dictate the semantics of that crime by insisting that people call this Covid-19 or some such rather than what it actually is, which is The China Virus, is obscene. It's a blatant attempt by China to evade responsibility, which is especially egregious since it was the same animal-human transmission from the same disgusting live animal/wet markets that caused SARS. China has shown no remorse, and demonstrated no public acknowledgement of its responsibility for mass global death, and as such it no longer deserves a seat at the table of the global community of civilized nations. Because it is not civilized, clearly. Then again, how could it be? Think Xinjiang. If there's one change that has to occur immediately it is the repatriation of all industrial capacity back to the US, most particularly of medical, technological and particularly telecom manufacturing. And when the worst is over, the global community needs to get together and decide how they will punish China for what it's just done.

I’m not sure the weather is going to make a difference. Northern Ca has microclimates. It can be sunny in beautiful Palo Alto and rainy and cloudy in SF. SF has a notoriously cloudy and cool summer. The weather here in Santa Clara county (Silicon Valley) is currently in the low 60s. It’s never humid here. In the summer it gets hot, but typically cools by the evening. LA hospitals have supposedly given up on testing anyone that does not need hospitalization. There is a shortage everywhere in PPE. Availability of test kits is no longer the bottle neck. They don’t want to waste PPE gear testing someone who will just be asked to go One advantage the Bay Area has over NYC is that we are not nearly as dense. I think there is a five story limit to buildings on the peninsula (Palo Alto, Mountain View, Sunnyvale etc.) San Jose is much bigger geographically than NYC. We also have a terrible mass transit system and no subway. The vast majority of us travel by personal car and do not live in big buildings. I do believe density is a huge factor. NYC is the most similar to Asia with respect to density. Much of America is suburban sprawl. This should be a plus for ugh if America. If we are sheltering in, it’s very easy to avoid all other people.

love this guy

What do you think of euro$ right now with the funding issues. Does it get worse before goes to 99.8 or 100? Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Thanks greatly Julian... Thoughts on: TLT in here ..? UUP in here ..? GDX/J ...in here ? Thank you very much ...

Which Barrons article was Julian referring to regarding safe dividend stocks?

Brilliant as always ... Thank you for the update ...

Great stuff. Thanks. However, I'm not going to be able to watch all the things that you watch. I suspect we readers are all assuming you will let us know about the trajectory vis-a-vis napalm run to nuclear winter!... BTW: VERY helpful about the need for some of the funds and others to have to come back into the equity market.

Julian, the best way I can describe the clinics you put up for us MI clients is like a show room Cadillac hitting the road for the very first time. Incredible video and I always walk away feeling like I understand macro and markets just a tad more. As the saying goes "Make yourself the dumbest person in the room." If you ever need an apprentice that will work for free and run errands just to learn from your brilliance I'm your guy lol. Keep up the great work Julian you're a rock star.

Totally brilliant update, thank you.

Hi Julian, On Florida, please do check the graphs at end of this article and especially the “Severe atypical illness level” in Florida! https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/18/health/coronavirus-fever-thermometers.html Thank you for these daily updates - super helpful!

Great insight Julian.... Please keep it coming. I couldn't make the tickers for mortgages ETF, will be grateful if someone can share. Tx

Julian, thank you so much for these frequent updates... can't overstate how helpful they've been.

@Julian - if you are interested in detailed tracking the number of new cases in Singapore (where it is always hot) the government have a whatsapp group with daily updates. Interestingly the majority of new cases are imported from people travelling and return to Singapore. Hopefully it is weather affected as you say https://www.form.gov.sg/#!/5e33fa3709f80b00113b6891

This was EXCEPTIONAL. I recommend people play portions back 2-3 times. I have personally come through the last few weeks in much better than I would otherwise have done, because of the insights you have shared to date. Now, we have many other good things to seriously think about - with so much likely to be coming clear in in the next few weeks/months. Just the kind of help I was hoping for from RV when I joined near the beginning - Thanks Julian!

Thank you Julian

Thanks, Julian.

Thank you so much for the frequent updates Julian! May I ask, is there a specific ETF or two that you recommend we use for the silver trade you mentioned? Thanks, Anthony