Crosspost: A Fool's Confession

[ShepherdRN]

First time writer, long time reader…

So just wanted to throw my $0.02 in from the front lines of the medical field to help anyone trying to decide whether to jump in the market or stay out of the market. Just to disclose, I went 100% cash in my non 401k accounts about a month ago before the huge fallout of our SAAS stocks. I have since nibbled back in to the market (about 30% in market) and bought my favorite AYX back at $80 and CRWD before latest earning report (had a hunch with COUP’s surge after their earning’s report, which I missed out on!). Of course, I wish I bought more but I am still human. lol.

So I work in a medium sized town in the Midwest (about 60k souls) and our hospital’s management has gone full steam ahead in preparation for covid surge. We are normally a 190 bed hospital with 14 ICU beds. With our surge plan we can increase our beds to 310 and have 41 bed ICU unit, with some pretty ingenious use of space. This is unprecedented.

Also in our ER where I work, we have created a covid walk in clinic in our ambulance bay, which we have put an extra 41 chairs there…with the option to put cots out there if needed in the future. Our current ER only has 30ish bed capacity, so we basically doubled our ER “beds”. We are currently testing everyone that comes in with flu like symptoms (finally able to since Monday) that a flu swab has come back negative.

Granted we are doing all this with only 1 positive case so far in our county. As a nurse for the past 20 years, it is breathtaking the extent we are preparing for this. I lived through a lot of the other “bugs” we have had in the past.

Anyhoo…hope this helps with anyone’s decisions on investing. I do think medically this will definitely get worse before its get better. Thank you for letting me go OT!

Happy investing! Saul, please stay healthy and thanks for all you do! God bless.

[XMFRob]

After dropping a bomb on this community, I think I need to be responsible and say a bit more:

The market… and life in general… is not always unpredictable in the big scope of things but it often is unpredictable in the little scope of things. To wit, I think the government response to the virus has been stronger than folks expected (not a political statement, it’s bipartisan) and it looks like the market might have a quick initial recovery after all.

So… I’m nibbling my way back in. That will be reflected in my Fool holdings within 24 hours. But I can’t discuss any particular company purchase for two market days. Yeah, that’s inconsistent isn’t it? But I don’t make the rules…

Take care out there. Show your love to those around you…even though that may include staying away.

Let me share a text exchange I had with a new neighbor yesterday (FYI, we’re in our late 60s):

Anup: Hi Rob, Brenda. This is Anup and Surekha, your neighbors. Hope you are doing great in this Corona emergency. Please let us know if you need any help in buying stuff like groceries etc. To reduce risk for you, we can buy it and put it in your garage, doorstep. You can leave them overnight to kill any virus before taking them in. We are with you in this tough time.

Me: That’s very kind of you two! Thanks! You’re great neighbors. Hope you understand that we’re trying to minimize our outside activity. As it is, we’re doing well (despite cancelled plans to leave for Hawaii tomorrow. LOL) and our daughter has already been getting any miscellaneous stuff we might need. Which hasn’t been much. How are all of you doing so far? By the way, did you see that our wall is now approved? Yay!

Anup: So nice to read that Rob. It’s great that your daughter is taking care. Yup great team work on wall, thanks for taking that initiative. We are doing great, working from home and all kids around.

Me: Excellent! Take care.

(The wall reference: The I-485 freeway next to our subdivision is being expanded. I reached out to DOT to have a noise wall added since original plans didn’t show our new sub in existence yet.)

Anyway…please remember your neighbors. You may never know what trials and needs they have without asking.

Rob
Rule Breaker / Market Pass / Supernova Starshot Home Fool & STMP/MTH Maintenance Coverage Fool
He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.

[brittlerock]

Well, I guess it’s OK to contribute to this OT thread. . .

I would just like to contribute a few words about - mostly about my state of mind since I exited the market about a week ago. So, yes, my state of mind is not a typical investing topic, but maybe it is a little.

[snip] Yeah, I just deleted several paragraphs . . .

I’m not good at “a few words.” More succinctly, we don’t know how the investment community will react when people are dying by the thousand every day. I know, that sounds like hyperbole, it’s not, in fact tens of thousands is not unlikely. More than a million deaths in total this year is not unlikely.

So far, my exit looks like a very expensive mistake. I can live with that. I have not made a permanent exit. I don’t have a re-entry date in mind, and I don’t have precise criteria either. But look, before I started investing with intention I missed out on a lot of gains. That’s most of my life. If I miss out, if we’ve already seen “the bottom” and it’s all gravy from here forward, I will re-enter with less ammunition than if I had done nothing. But my decision was not just a fiscal decision. Health, both mental and physical are more important than money.

Irrespective of your investment decisions, do your best to stay healthy.

I am sleeping more soundly since I went to cash. And, to be totally candid, I’ve made some limited option plays since I exited, but that’s very OT so I’ll say nothing more about it.

[branmin]

“So far, my exit looks like a very expensive mistake. I can live with that.”

Brittle…nothing is a mistake when it comes to money over your health. You did what you think was best at the time and you could be right in a few weeks/months or wrong. Regardless, so you are watching X at the moment just go up and up, next week it could be the opposite or you could be in hospital. Life. It will be OK, we will get through this, and so will you. Have faith in yourself and protect those around you. It takes some big ones to explain your circumstances in such an honest way.

Best. Bran.

p.s. Sorry Saul. OT perhaps but from the heart. Brittlerock has supplied us with some outstanding posts in the past and will do so again in his/her own time.

[mekong22]

I’ll throw two OT cents out there too

My thought process over the past few weeks was not to try to time any investing moves around when the pandemic is the worst, but when the mass population’s expectations are at their worst. Stock market moves are all about expectations, just as much as actual information/results.

There is no doubt that the grim quantitative numbers regarding infections & deaths associated with this situation are going to look much worse a week or two from now than they do today. But a few days ago when I was hearing people worry that quarantines could go on like this for 18 months, while at the same time seeing how things had already started subsiding in China, made me think that the market reaction may have been overdone and might not get much worse than it was at that point.

I didn’t do anything too major with my holdings in reaction. I did look at some options pricing, but most of the pricing wasn’t very good (e.g. they were priced to expect a relatively soon comeback already), which prompted me to just buy regular common shares of AYX and DDOG when I reduced my TTD stake (although I did buy some 2022 NTNX call options where the pricing seemed like a good risk/reward).

I figured any good news about possible vaccines etc, even if they are still a year away from being mass available, would have more positive effect on the market than any new bad news.

But at the same time, this whole situation is so unprecedented in my lifetime that I didn’t want to put too much of my life savings at unnecessary or outsized risk, considering all the uncertainties, not to mention the losses I’ve already incurred.

I think I made a few good, minor moves, but never felt the need to do anything major, and I have no regrets so far.

Congrats to Rob and those of you that were successful going with your gut and having it work out so well so far.

-mekong

[XMFRob]

My thought process over the past few weeks was not to try to time any investing moves around when the pandemic is the worst, but when the mass population’s expectations are at their worst. Stock market moves are all about expectations, just as much as actual information/results. – mekong

Exactly!

Rob
Rule Breaker / Market Pass / Supernova Starshot Home Fool & STMP/MTH Maintenance Coverage Fool
He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.

[5761796E65]

China had no new cases yesterday in the whole country.

When we look at China, we need to consider what actions they took to stop the virus. It didn’t magically go away. Wuhan implemented a total lockdown with only 444 cases, with the rest of China following a few days later. These extreme measures contained the virus to only 80,000 cases in China, a 100x increase in cases from the start of the lockdown.

The US is at 16,000 cases, with only California implementing a similar type lockdown. Our growth rate is 33% compounded daily.
March 7 - 435 cases
March 19 - 13,789 cases
April 1 - 540,000 cases projected (using same growth rate)

My questions:
A. Can we stop the virus without a 50-day Wuhan-style nationwide lockdown?
B. If we could implement a nationwide lockdown today, would we end up with around 1.6m cases?
C. What effect would a lockdown have on the US & Global economy?

[SaulR80683]

Hi Brittle,

This is enormously scary and you don’t have to apologize for your decision. If it was right for you it was the right thing to do, and we’re not through this yet, it may turn out to have been the correct decision after all.

We value your thoughts and please do continue to post on the board.

Saul

[draj]

My questions:
A. Can we stop the virus without a 50-day Wuhan-style nationwide lockdown?
B. If we could implement a nationwide lockdown today, would we end up with around 1.6m cases?
C. What effect would a lockdown have on the US & Global economy?

Several items are very concerning.

1.7 states have yet to take all necessary measures to prevent spread of the virus.Texas is one.

2. Too many people are still convinced that coronavirus is a hoax of some kind.

3.Spring breakers are still celebrating here in Florida and elsewhere, although some of the Florida mayors closed beaches and bars just yesterday. Those kids are going home soon, many of them will be infected.

4. Several population centers are showing signs of taxing their hospital capacities and the no of cases is growing.

5.Communities around the country are reporting that medical staff are being forced to treat corona patients without having adequate respiratory protection.

6. The 10 million or so promised test kits haven’t been deployed. (I’m not sure they exist.)

7 In a number of instances ( maybe few or maybe many) people are refusing to comply with closure or shelter in place requests. (Elon Musk ?) Perhaps you’ve seen the published photos of people lining up to buy guns?

So I believe this will take a little longer to subside.

Be careful and stay well.

[freecapital]

This NYT article is concerning :

SNIP…

“For the second time this century, the world is facing an acute shortage of dollar funding. This is a big problem: An enormous amount of global financial activity depends on the use of the dollar. If we are to contain the fallout from the crisis, America’s central bank must act as a lender of last resort not just to America’s financial system but also to the entire world’s.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/20/opinion/coronavirus-econo…