Credit deflation and the reflation cycle to come (part 2)

[jamtomorrow]

15 minutes ago, geordie_lurch said:

This is an interesting video with a new (I think?) take on the recent spike in M1...

 

Lovely video @geordie_lurch, thanks for sharing.

It's really interesting hearing different rationalisations for the M1 spike. I think the most we can say for sure is that it represents a big and sudden shift in institutional liquidity preference. The rest is speculation - for now.

[Boon]

Wonder if the PPT will put in an appearance this afternoon.

This *feels* like nonsense to me. Media seem to think this has been the only time the virus has mutated - there have been loads of mutations already. Mutations also are way more likely to make the virus less deadly; a dead carrier is of no use to the virus. Thus natural selection would see this strain winning anyway.

It also has been known for a while - it started over a month ago. 

It seems to me to be a political gambit. Johnson introduces it as some kind of justification for another U-turn, but I bet he didn't expect all the countries to pull up their borders against us.

[leonardratso]

11 minutes ago, Boon said:

Wonder if the PPT will put in an appearance this afternoon.

This *feels* like nonsense to me. Media seem to think this has been the only time the virus has mutated - there have been loads of mutations already. Mutations also are way more likely to make the virus less deadly; a dead carrier is of no use to the virus. Thus natural selection would see this strain winning anyway.

It also has been known for a while - it started over a month ago. 

It seems to me to be a political gambit. Johnson introduces it as some kind of justification for another U-turn, but I bet he didn't expect all the countries to pull up their borders against us.

yeah, well, sometimes it takes a punch in the mouth to shut some people up.

[lid]

3 hours ago, Castlevania said:

€0.20! Excellent.

You had to choose between extra shares or cash by 17/12. At least that's what II told me

[Hardhat]

I watched the BBC 10pm news last night for the first time in ages...

The total death figure they use (67,000 odd) has a disclaimer below the number: "deaths of any cause within 28 days of a positive covid-19 test". It's right there, on TV, beneath the big number.

Exactly how stupid do they think most people in this country are?

 

Don't answer that...

[stoobs]

1 hour ago, Boon said:

This *feels* like nonsense to me. Media seem to think this has been the only time the virus has mutated - there have been loads of mutations already. Mutations also are way more likely to make the virus less deadly; a dead carrier is of no use to the virus. Thus natural selection would see this strain winning anyway.

I've often heard that mutations tend to be less harmful.

However I don't understand the science behind that.

Once a host has developed immunity it is no more useful to the virus than a dead host.

So if a virus enables a host to wander around infecting others for a month before becoming immune, why is that beneficial to the virus compared with a host wandering around infecting others for a month before dying?

[janch]

On 19/12/2020 at 17:17, MrXxxx said:

Couple of [rhetorical] questions regarding this:

1. Why did you buy Tesco and Diageo?

2. So GDR didn't rocket but did you buy it as a short-term trade or a long-term hold, and which one of these two approaches do you consider you are [or were] when you bought it?

Sorry only just seen your question.  Tesco and Diageo were supposedly long-term hold divi payers but I think I could probably do better and frankly they're boring.

GDR was a punt and I will admit to not all my shares are for the long term.  I'm not averse to the odd short-term trade.  This one definitely didn't pay off

I think I've changed my stance a bit as I've got more into this investing malarkey and would now aim for total return.  Some of my reflation shares are still underwater but overall I'm up a bit because I started to buy some of the momentum IT/etfs especially the "green" ones.  I don't know if these will turn into long-term holds and will reassess as we go along.

[The Idiocrat]

21 minutes ago, stoobs said:

I've often heard that mutations tend to be less harmful.

However I don't understand the science behind that.

Once a host has developed immunity it is no more useful to the virus than a dead host.

So if a virus enables a host to wander around infecting others for a month before becoming immune, why is that beneficial to the virus compared with a host wandering around infecting others for a month before dying?

If you’re very ill and going to die you’re hardly going to be walking around infecting others for 4 weeks! You might manage the first week. If you’re  asymptomatic or have very mild symptoms you’ll go about your day as normal.

[JMD]

6 hours ago, dnb24 said:

I tend to agree to an extent, however what I seen this past year I think there is another layer on top of this that set the direction of travel with a message. For example from a medical perspective- 2 years ago you’d never put someone who is in respiratory failure on a ventilator in a rapid fashion, there would be a work up through various o2 delivery systems.Yet the message came from somewhere, and our icu consultants were putting people on vents straight from their admission. Then there was the message in our hospital of needing 1000 icu beds- that came from somewhere and was intentional to cause panic, as within a week managers were told we’d keep beds as they were. A big one for me was sitting on a hospital management board, our hospitals ICU couldn’t staff enough beds in early April, someone mentioned that the big central London hospital nearest to us had 100 free ICU beds! Still transferring patients wasn’t an option. A message needed to be sent that hospitals couldn’t cope. 
I do agree though that the societal, political and economic qualities of the populace are what drive the direction of travel. 

I think your and SP's covid posts and conversations provide very invaluable information.                                                      And not just for the virus policy mistakes made, but also for the link to the macro environment - ie I like to think they provide a 'proxy insight' into government thinking and ability. Ok our rulers receive an unsurprising dismal score... but as I posted back in March time I commented then that i believed CV might have a bigger effect on us all than global warming policies. However I admit that was pure conjecture on my part, plus I was looking down the wrong end of the telescope and was mostly talking about investment ideas/prospects. It turns out that the real revelation to come was about government covid controls plus the malleability of the public. My point being that studying/interpreting covid policy gives us a window into our governments soul(!?).                                                                                                                                                                        Anyway the positives from all this mullarkey is that it was a useful early warning for me of the type of government spasticity we can expect in future. The frightening bit has been the compliance of the public, media, opposition parties, and the legal proffession... for example I note that Simon Dolan's legal case has recently been thrown out, he was attempting to highlight government abuse of the 1984 public health act, whereby lockdown was imposed without proper parliamentary oversight. I recall that the old USSR regularly shut down public debate and locked up their own citizens by cynically using their own mental health laws. 

[JMD]

6 hours ago, jamtomorrow said:

That neatly captures my interest in crypto @JMD, especially bitcoin.

The whole thesis of this thread is that monetary cycles have greater influence on social/political/economic trends and attitudes than most people think.

Taking that as read: how do I vote for monetary policy different from the one being forced down my throat by the unelected monetary politburos?

Until recently, I couldn't and I would have reluctantly agreed with DB's philosophy of focusing on what *can* be controlled.

Then Bitcoin happened. Taking a position in Bitcoin is - in part - my way of voting against monetary communism. My hope is that enough like-minded souls do the same and consign Central Banking to history, where it belongs.

In the meantime, my personal battle is to keep that idealism in check when it comes to preserving wealth for my family. And that is one of the main reasons I value this contrarian community, because it constantly challenges my congnitive biases and helps me think about diversifying in the right way.

So my thanks to you all, and may the Great Solstice Conjunction portend the showering of Mad Gainz on every one of us in the coming Roaring 20's.

Not sure if BTC represents idealism or realism? Anyway i've got some BTC, oh and I also hold some coal miners, showing perhaps how contrarian I am.

[Agent ZigZag]

The frightening bit has been the compliance of the public, media, opposition parties, and the legal profession.

 

People will continue and will always comply when they are paid their benefits, their fairlough money etc etc. Reduce or cut off these payments then watch compliance go out the window as the masses will be affected.

Maggie Thatcher was right socialism fails when other peoples' money runs out. The UK Government can only paly this game (what ever its is - although for me it is about Global political repositioning) for so long. 

For now Im chilled although still watching carefully from the sidelines.

 

[kibuc]

1 hour ago, stoobs said:

I've often heard that mutations tend to be less harmful.

However I don't understand the science behind that.

Once a host has developed immunity it is no more useful to the virus than a dead host.

So if a virus enables a host to wander around infecting others for a month before becoming immune, why is that beneficial to the virus compared with a host wandering around infecting others for a month before dying?

You're looking at it as if virus was making conscious decisions that benefit him personally, but that's not the case.

Viruses do what all other organisms are programmed to do: they multiply, and for that they need a host. Killing the host might be the side effect of their presence but that's not the goal. Now, if the way they multiply inside the host is beneficial to their spread, it results in them spreading wildly. If it isn't, it results in the virus slowly dying out. Natural selection with a very short turnaround time. Asking whether the virus finds something beneficial to it or not is missing the point.

There was this game in the 90s, called "Life" I think, where you had a blue dot and a red dot, and you set the "procreation" and "death" conditions for each. Then you simply hit start and watched as it all unfolded. That's basically all there is to it. With virues, due to their mutation abilities, those conditions change dynamically, but the base premise of the game stays the same.

[MrXxxx]

2 hours ago, Cattle Prod said:

Oh, and they noted that this variant was growing exponentially during national lockdown. In other words, they noted that lockdowns don't work. Niall Ferguson was on the comittee, so somebody is putting him in his box.

Surely any pathogen that duplicates in a constant time period will grow exponentially until its food source becomes depleted?

[MrXxxx]

1 hour ago, stoobs said:

I've often heard that mutations tend to be less harmful.

However I don't understand the science behind that.

Once a host has developed immunity it is no more useful to the virus than a dead host.

So if a virus enables a host to wander around infecting others for a month before becoming immune, why is that beneficial to the virus compared with a host wandering around infecting others for a month before dying?

I think you have answered your own question...how many people do you know infected with a serious pathogen are able to 'run around like a mad thing' and then drop dead the next day?...also, when/if the pathogen mutates sufficiently it may be able to affect the recovered host at a later date, it definitely can't do that with a dead host!

[MrXxxx]

1 hour ago, janch said:

Sorry only just seen your question.  Tesco and Diageo were supposedly long-term hold divi payers but I think I could probably do better and frankly they're boring.

GDR was a punt and I will admit to not all my shares are for the long term.  I'm not averse to the odd short-term trade.  This one definitely didn't pay off

I think I've changed my stance a bit as I've got more into this investing malarkey and would now aim for total return.  Some of my reflation shares are still underwater but overall I'm up a bit because I started to buy some of the momentum IT/etfs especially the "green" ones.  I don't know if these will turn into long-term holds and will reassess as we go along.

Fair enough...you are modifying your portfolio as a result of an increased understanding and/or change in your investment approach/plan, rather than just 'playing' blindly :-)

[MrXxxx]

32 minutes ago, JMD said:

However I admit that was pure conjecture on my part, plus I was looking down the wrong end of the telescope and was mostly talking about investment ideas/prospects. It turns out that the real revelation to come was about government covid controls plus the malleability of the public. My point being that studying/interpreting covid policy gives us a window into our governments soul(!?).

I agree, knowing policy and forward thinking could be very useful in predicting a buy/sell situation, unfortunately the current governments approach to Covid policy is inconsistent at best and schizophrenic at worse!

[stoobs]

Thanks for all the responses and I do get the argument that sick hosts are less active than healthy ones.

However, this all only makes a real difference with huge variations in mortality rate.

If virusA killed 99% of hosts and virusB killed 0.001% then virusB would be around longer than virusB.

However if virusC killed 1%, virusD killed 2% and virusE killed 3% I don't really see that virusC would necessarily do better.

All would still have plenty of hosts, and particularly if all three were circulating in the population at the same time, all three would suffer to the same extent by the removal of dead hosts from the population, no matter which variant had killed them.

[MrXxxx]

18 minutes ago, kibuc said:

Viruses do what all other organisms are programmed to do: they multiply, and for that they need a host. Killing the host might be the side effect of their presence but that's not the goal. Now, if the way they multiply inside the host is beneficial to their spread, it results in them spreading wildly. If it isn't, it results in the virus slowly dying out. Natural selection with a very short turnaround time. Asking whether the virus finds something beneficial to it or not is missing the point.

Exactly, natural selection at the population level not the individual...sorry about taking this 'off subject' folks, let's get back to pizza ovens :-)))

[kibuc]

2 minutes ago, MrXxxx said:

Exactly, natural selection at the population level not the individual...sorry about taking this 'off subject' folks, let's get back to pizza ovens :-)))

It takes less and less silver Britannias to buy a pizza oven.

[MrXxxx]

6 minutes ago, stoobs said:

Thanks for all the responses and I do get the argument that sick hosts are less active than healthy ones.

However, this all only makes a real difference with huge variations in mortality rate.

If virusA killed 99% of hosts and virusB killed 0.001% then virusB would be around longer than virusB.

However if virusC killed 1%, virusD killed 2% and virusE killed 3% I don't really see that virusC would necessarily do better.

All would still have plenty of hosts, and particularly if all three were circulating in the population at the same time, all three would suffer to the same extent by the removal of dead hosts from the population, no matter which variant had killed them.

OK think of each % saved as an extra offspring per generation so

Generation 1 - vC has 2 more offspring than vE, and 1 more than vD in the first generation.

Generation 2 - vC has two extra offspring fro gen 1 that can produce 2 extra offspring more than vE.

Ditto generation 3 to infinity...before long vC swamps the whole host population with its offspring....kind of like compound interest; Note tenuous link trying desperately to bring it back on to subject :-)))

[Bobthebuilder]

18 hours ago, Bus Stop Boxer said:

You're in Dorset too aren't you?

There's a lot of it about down here.

Sorry @Bus Stop Boxeronly just seen your post, want to reply, so you don't think I'm being rude.

I am in London, but I know Dorset very well.

[Harley]

Re. all your off topic ramblings about our virus, you missed the main point:

[dnb24]

5 hours ago, Cattle Prod said:

I read the minutes of the meeting that all this nonsense came out of. They concluded 'moderate confidence' that the new (as in September!) variant has increased transmissability.

It's common in science to give a range of outcomes. Moderate is in the middle of low and high. I deal in P (probability) numbers. A P10 is a 10% chance of happening, or low. P90 is a 90% chance, or high. If I give a P50 (mid or moderate) number my boss tells me to do a bit more work on it and get off the fence. 'Moderate' is science speak for 'we don't really know'.

Oh, and they noted that this variant was growing exponentially during national lockdown. In other words, they noted that lockdowns don't work. Niall Ferguson was on the comittee, so somebody is putting him in his box.

So this is manufactured political theatre: Mancock just took the worst sounding numbers out of it and splattered them to the media, with his tame dogs Whitty and Valance to harass Boris. Markets are tanking because they needed a correction, and this is just a handy excuse. The Oxford vaccine will likely be approved before New Year, and markets will probably react to that too. It was ever thus. Whatever, I got me some more Rolls Royce this morning. If my insurance puts pay out when the Yanks wake up, I'll buy more silver and oil.

Excerpt from the minutes:

 

3 hours ago, JMD said:

I think your and SP's covid posts and conversations provide very invaluable information.                                                      And not just for the virus policy mistakes made, but also for the link to the macro environment - ie I like to think they provide a 'proxy insight' into government thinking and ability. Ok our rulers receive an unsurprising dismal score... but as I posted back in March time I commented then that i believed CV might have a bigger effect on us all than global warming policies. However I admit that was pure conjecture on my part, plus I was looking down the wrong end of the telescope and was mostly talking about investment ideas/prospects. It turns out that the real revelation to come was about government covid controls plus the malleability of the public. My point being that studying/interpreting covid policy gives us a window into our governments soul(!?).                                                                                                                                                                        Anyway the positives from all this mullarkey is that it was a useful early warning for me of the type of government spasticity we can expect in future. The frightening bit has been the compliance of the public, media, opposition parties, and the legal proffession... for example I note that Simon Dolan's legal case has recently been thrown out, he was attempting to highlight government abuse of the 1984 public health act, whereby lockdown was imposed without proper parliamentary oversight. I recall that the old USSR regularly shut down public debate and locked up their own citizens by cynically using their own mental health laws. 

I know this has taken the thread in a slightly different direction. Using DBs insight - sars coV-2 is essentially the deflationary BK of a number of health industries. Pure disinflation, the health service infrastructure has had 40 years of disinflation- anyone visiting our hospital would appreciate that- it’s a relic. The health systems IT structure is stuck in 2008 (at best). Our supply systems are all Chinese based and shit. The nursing programmes have to rely on 3rd world countries to bring in staff etc etc. We have just been told they will build us a new hospital to the tune of £1bill- government directly financing. I wouldn’t have seen this so clearly if it hadn’t been for the thread and DB.

[sleepwello'nights]

4 hours ago, stoobs said:

 

However I don't understand the science behind that.

Once a host has developed immunity it is no more useful to the virus than a dead host.

 

I don't know the science either.

My rationale would be that the virus becomes less deadly so it is able to survive in the host. The benign mutations can then continue to be transmitted to other hosts without causing severe illness. They become harmless to the host and extend the life span of the virus.

[dnb24]

51 minutes ago, sam1994 said:

What does BK stand for? 

Big kahuna