The price of a barrel of oil, or a gallon of fuel, has nothing to do with margin on sales for a gas station. The pump price has the markup built in. The gas retail operator will make his 5¢ per gallon. Nobody sells gas to make a living. The pumps are there to generate traffic. The store selling cigarettes, beer, hot dogs, sodas, coffee..... Is more profitable than fuel purchase. The mechanic in the service bay is usually his own small business, paying rent to the gas station operator. Truck stops like TA also have showers, a game room, laundry machines, and restaurants. Marathon Petroleum owns Speedway. GTY has a bunch of different brands. SVC owns TA. Technically, SVC owns the real estate. TA is a separate company, paying rent to SVC. Then independent franchisees pay TA, just like buying a McDonald's. Layers of profit. The gas stations are either leased or franchised to the gas station operator. Price of oil is too high? Pay your rent. People staying home are buying less gas? Pay your rent. You are earning less because you can't sell Dunkin' Donuts at your Speedway? Pay your rent. Rent is due at a prior agreed upon amount, for the duration of your lease agreement. No gas station operator wants to lose his business. So the little guy will pawn his gold fillings, take a 3rd mortgage on his house, cash advance his credit cards, cut shifts and pump gas himself, sell himself to chickenhawks, whatever......He will not allow corporate to take his business away, and lose everything. Invest in the stocks of these companies, and you profit even if the small business owner pees blood.
Ma’am please put on a mask. NA, I’d rather pee on the floor. why is it just so hard to put on a mask people. I just can’t even... https://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2020/07/17/roseville-urination-verizon-arrest/
Opinions vary. Some people have different beliefs. Some arguments for personal belief are strong and compelling - to them. Doesn't make them right. But they believe it. There are people who believe that they are safe in their house of worship. Their god or whatever they worship is protecting them. They believe that they have a right to practice their faith. You can't convince people that science is on the side of minimal airborne pathogen transmission. Some of us are aware of the science versus faith controversy. I prefer to seek medical care and scientific research. Others want to pray away illness. Others balance belief with medicine.
Hawaii records 109 new coronavirus cases in largest daily spike since pandemic reached state https://www.staradvertiser.com/2020...est-daily-spike-since-pandemic-reached-state/ That’s the number for today, we have never seen over 100 cases in a day here in Hawaii before
It's probably a bullshit number like here in Florida: Coronavirus update: Florida labs not reporting negative test results, report says https://www.foxnews.com/health/coro...bs-not-reporting-negative-test-results-report https://www.newsmax.com/us/coronavirus-covid-florida/2020/07/14/id/977213/ Several Florida Labs Wrongly Report 100 Percent of COVID-19 Tests Positive Florida might look into rumors about positive COVID results with no actual tests — if anybody comes forward with proof https://www.sun-sentinel.com/corona...0200723-vkukr2ge2nhynfye6g45ubusdy-story.html
If you have had it, or you have lost someone to it, then this isn't for you. You already know it. Put the damn mask on and stop spreading your crap on everyone else. The difference between being ignorant or stupid is easy to see. Ignorance can learn, stupid refuses to.
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/micae...base-suicides-than-covid-deaths-n2573278?2922 CDC Director Says Students Are Experiencing More Suicides and Overdoses than COVID Deaths
Alright, if we're not going to keep it civil, we can shut this thread down for a bit which I don't think anybody wants. This is not the thread for memes or personal opinions. Goes for everyone, I'm not picking on just you. People on this forum have had family members and friends die of COVID. Feel free to link articles or have discussions about data if we can all do it as adults or this thread will have to get a temporary closure. And again, please don't take this as a personal attack on yourself, I have warned others on this site for "memeing on the left" as well.
A disease with a death rate of about 1% has become political. Wow. The death rate for commercial flights is 0.00000033% (one in three million) and lots of people are scared of flying. Maybe people don't understand how high of a risk 1% is. Meanwhile in the market... I don't understand how Carnival CL is still at $13.84. Makes zero sense to me. I've thought about buying a put again but haven't. No way it has $13.84 of value, IMO. I base that on how the books look now and what I expect the books to look like in the next short term before they either go bankrupt or receive a huge cash injection. I'm a long term investor so I'm just going back to my long term hole and do nothing for months on end.
They are losing money every day. Cash burn. Without any charters, those ships have to dock. Dock fees. Staffing. Ongoing maintenance. Some fuel is still idling the engines. Real world overhead. Zero income. The debt load is increasing by the day. United Airlines has cash burn @$40million daily. What are cruise ships burning? Cruise ship stocks go up every time more people buy the stock. Supply and demand. Stock price does not reflect companies' financial situation. If stock were traded in real world value, they would have to pay me to accept it.
No matter what happens in November, Covid19 Corona Virus will send money in the direction of healthcare. Right now, we see the big reaction towards vaccine development. Hospitals will be realigned. Surely in every region, a Covid focused hospital and Covid clinics will emerge, to isolate Covid patients and allow other hospitals to carry on with other medical needs. Healthcare Insurance will raise rates, and see an increase in volume of claims processed. Pharmacies will see a surge as there will be outpatient care and patients will need to fill prescriptions. CVS and Walgreens are in place to profit, as Rite Aid will probably be absorbed by a bigger company, maybe an insurance company like Anthem seeking to expand services and marketshare. Blue Cross / Blue Shield / Rite Aid. Same way Walgreens is now adding medical clinics to stores, downsizing retail to focus on pharmacy sales, and reducing square footage cost. CVS bought Aetna, bought Target Pharmacies, and will probably build medical clinics into the retail store. Actual doctors offices are moving in the direction of One Medical ONEM and Oak Street Healthcare OSH. Humana, Centene, United Healthcare, Cigna, Anthem will gain increases in revenue.
I was looking through the composite data Friday for the latest information since we have gotten a lot more information since this pandemic took off a few months back. I work at small rural hospital and for the past 3 months we have been doing COVID screening for our county. As of August 1st the number of US cases were 4.8 million cases, of which 2,362,903 have recovered, 2,520,801 are ongoing, and 157,898 have died. This puts the mortality rate at 6%, which is probably higher than the actual number since initially only hi risk and symptomatic patients were tested and those with minor symptoms were not tested and thus not counted when they recovered. CDC reported about a 5.2% mortality rate as of the end of June and the worldwide rate was calculated to 1.4% at the end of April. For comparison SARS was estimated at 9.6% mortality and influenza is estimated at 0.1%. In our county, we have had 547 positive patients and 10 fatalities, a 1.8% mortality rate. Of note is our positive rate of tested patients in our state actually increased from 8% to 14% in the past month with more widespread testing, when you would expect it to decline as less sick patients were tested. About 75% of the US fatalities are over 65 years old and 96% are over 45 years old. It is definitely far more dangerous for our older population. Unfortunately, last week we had to stop testing asymptomatic patients due to the lack of available swabs (which is ridiculous, how hard it it to make a cotton swab), now patients have to go to an adjacent county to be tested. I guess our number of positives will start to fall as people don't get tested and contact tracing is impossible to do anymore. It will look better on paper but out mortality statistics will look worse. As a final musing, I'm not too excited about the prospects for a vaccine. I still remember when I was in medical school and the HIV virus was identified (another RNA virus). They told use we had a treatment of AZT to use at that time but a vaccine should be along in about 5 years. That was 1990 and 30 years later there still isn't a vaccine. I'm sure they will develop something that induces an antibody response but whether it is effective is in preventing the disease and how long the response will last are big question marks, but we will all cheer and pretend its been fixed until the virus eventually burns itself out in a year or two.
As people point out that Wall Street is disconnected from Main Street......Washington is disconnected from the real word. Politicians will say anything to get more money.... You can't legislate a vaccine into existence. Signing a bill into law, does not make science happen. A prior President insisted that if he signed a bill into law, cars would get 52 miles per gallon with zero emissions. I don't know what science is capable of. I'm skeptical that companies who have never brought a drug to market will create something now. I don't trust the company that created.a.vaccine in 3 hours. I think we will have better luck with establishing new.safety protocols for schools, and public spaces. There may be an advancement in HVAC technology for safer buildings Perhaps a new filtration method. A new world will evolve. We a never go back to the old normal. Look at how AIDS changed the world.
Real life boots on the ground HVAC Technology! It's my trade... Was a HVAC mechanic for a large health care network for 28 years. An 18 month HEPA filter change was about a million dollars not counting pre filters. Had to be mask fit tested and licensed to perform a simple task of changing filters which wasn't a bad thing. Disposal of filters, suits and masks after task was complete was very expensive. It seemed we had inspectors in every week. Everything in the early years was all hand written reports on filter changes, DOT disposal, OR air exchange rates, neg pressure readings, etc. The network invested in a BASF system to log all these area's the inspectors like to see. All great things, very expensive. We took are HVAC systems very serious, and the inspectors did there job in making sure we took them serious! Now if the Fed or local gov mandated that these types of systems must be installed in all buildings I'm afraid that most will close. These systems work, but are very expensive to operate. On another note most of the face masks that people are wearing thinking they are protecting themselves or others, false hope is the only word that comes to mind. Happy Investing!
