Omicron seems to be hitting it's stride. It won't take all that long before everyone in the world will have it or has had it. I believe this is a good thing. Omicron is the most contagious form of COVID and it is also the least lethal, from what I can tell. Everyone who wants to be vaxed has been. At least, in North America. The purpose of the lock downs was to slow the spread until vaccines could be roled out. That has happened so this could be an opportunity to improve herd immunity with the lowest mortality rate, short of everyone getting the vaccine.
Evergrande has now missed two coupon payment dates, although each remains within a 30 day grace period. The chairman of Evergrande has said the company will deliver 39000 housing units this month. This is quadruple what they delivered in each of the three previous months. They have to keep projects moving in order to survive, so this is good news. An Evergrande failure will impact the global economy but it does not look like a failure will take the form every single western media outlet has been projecting. There seems to be a "soft failure" option in which the Chinese government steps in and takes over part of the debt while steering company operations away from the cliff. This could result in a small to no impact situation but, whatever happens, the results should be apparent early in January.
We are about to see a spike in dram prices which will undoubtedly cause a dumpster fire in the IT world.
I just finished the year end accounting. I'm blown away that we made it to 40%. We were at 38%, just a couple of days ago. It ended up being a Santa Claus rally, just as WXYZ predicted. As we become increasingly conservative in retirement, our yields are going to taper down. That makes the past few year returns invaluable, heading into retirement. The future has more indexing and less risk, for us. That will make this blog even more boring than it currently is. lol!
We experienced a down tick, yesterday. Nothing I'm concerned about. Current WBI is 207.4 I'm kind of smitten with Ameritrade's conditional orders. I believe they are intended for traders to set up Rube Goldbergian trades that are sure to make someone rich quickly. We use them differently. Conditional trading is fairly new to me. I've only used them twice. They are a sweet way to set up a limit equity buy (3 day settle) with a second OTA order to sell some sort of money market (2 day settle) to cover. Using an OTA (One Triggers Another) order, I will be able to participate in any sales that come up, even while I'm on vacation with no access to the market. In my day, we could hardly believe it was possible to record one channel while watching another. OTA for the win!
I believe there is a much better than even chance we are within 6 months of the end of covid. At least, as a pandemic. Omicron seems to be the solution, as it is going to infect everyone on the planet, including the vaccine obstinate. This is our only path to herd immunity. It is now way too late to stop omicron. We can slow it, a bit, at great cost, but we are all going to get it. The conspiracy theories of covid originating in a lab are plausible. I don't present the idea as fact but a lot of very smart people believe it's a possibility so I do not discount the idea. A few people believe omicron may have also been created in a lab as a cure. This also seems possible, based on my research. The primary lesson gleaned from covid has been that the west is massively susceptible to viral attack as we have demonstrated that 37.5% of our population are not smart enough to vaccinate, even when under 14x increased chance of survival. Even if covid is completely natural and random, our enemies have been given a convenient attack vector. That does not bode well. So, short term, I am bullish as hell on a euphoric reaction to the end of covid. Tom's odds book: We all get omicron - 100% Covid created in a lab - 40% Omicron is the last major covid wave - 65% Peak omicron: mid February 22 Massive decline by April 22
I sure hope you are right about Omicron being the mass "vaccination" that ends the madness. If we all get it, perhaps it will be beaten into the weeds for a while so we can regroup and make it a seasonal issue instead of a global catastrophe. So very tired of the politics and arguing over this.
According to Harry Dent, we are fixing to crash around 87% so covid should be the least of our worries.
You are wise, Sundance. It is long proven that reacting to every plausible market crash indicator will only serve to melt half your face off. Long term success requires a degree of bravery.
I don't expect a Russian invasion of the Ukraine to particularly bolster markets. I'm not going to sell anything but I have cancelled an order that was near filling. It was entered on January 5th with a discount price on VOO and left open for a long time. At this point, I'm going to wait for a bit deeper discount before I trigger my correction buy.
Between the coup news and ratcheting tensions in Europe, I'm looking forward to a very nice deal on VOO.
I think that Russia will wait until the games in China are over, after all, the Russians and the Chinese are close friends and businesspartners. So, it will take some time!
I don't know how long I will hold sh. I'm on vacation and not paying much attention. If ever there were a recipe for failure on a short position..... For what it's worth, I don't have a big position in sh, based on ratio of portfolio value. Meanwhile, this looks like the perfect time to short Nvidia. I will not take any action on this but I expect Nvidia to take a moderate hit in the next 30 days.
