I'm not one to wear a tin foil hat but

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Tin foil hat on

Announced this morning at 8:30
Q1 Real GDP - Consensus -3.7% Actual -4.8%
Q1 Real Consumer Spending - Consensus -1.5% Actual -7.6%

If I'm reading this correctly this is far worse than expected.

Then right around the same time Gilead announces it is aware of “positive data” from one of its studies looking at antiviral drug remdesivir as a potential treatment for the coronavirus.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/29/gil...ata-on-remdesivir-coronavirus-drug-trial.html

Of course futures responded very positively - I guess on the Gilead's news. I just find it very odd these were announced concurrently.

Tin foil hat off

Am I missing something here?

Any comments?
 
Not the first time this has happened.
Just part of the all out effort to keep the markets going.
 
Where have you been? Everyone knows the US Bureau of Economic Analysis controls Gilead.
 
Funny enough, the results for remdesivir were not that great. The big news is that they reached the end point in one of their studies. I agree that this is being pumped to try to "restore" business and consumer confidence that a treatment is soon available. I for one hope it works because we need a treatment and soon. But their paper, although positive, has some gaps.

From their own release:
Remdesivir is not yet licensed or approved anywhere globally and has not yet been demonstrated to be safe or effective for the treatment of COVID-19. This study sought to determine whether a shorter, 5-day course of remdesivir would achieve similar efficacy results as the 10-day treatment regimen used in multiple ongoing studies of remdesivir.

The reason for the 5 day test is that the drug is hard to manufacture and they could double the amount for dosage by using a 5 day regime rather than the 10 day.

Looking further, there is still no placebo group study completed yet and those put on the drug were in the "mild" catagory and may have gotten better on their own. Without a placebo study this is anecdotal.
 
Gumby said:
Where have you been? Everyone knows the US Bureau of Economic Analysis controls Gilead.
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Apparently I am one of the few who was not aware of this. Makes much more sense now.

Thanks
 
IMO - The publicly traded companies working on therapies and vaccines are playing to their audiences - shareholders and those giving out government grants. There is no financial upside to them being pessimistic.

As a result, these folks are going to be as overly optimistic as a CEO/CFO of a corporation in a bull market during earnings reports.

The public health officials like Fauci are going to show more guarded optimism with a touch a pessimism to help offset unrealistic expectations.
 
The market is trading primarily on Covid news.

But bad economic news (though mostly baked in the cake) could mean more fiscal or monetary stimulus, good for market.
 
Seeing what the stock market is doing, I'm becoming increasingly disenchanted with the stock market.... the disconnect between the market and economy is concerning as is the Feds propping up the market and the percentage of trading that is "software programs trading with other software programs". At some point I'll probably buy some long-dated SPY LEAP calls to quell my FOMO, but my appetite for direct investment in stocks is negligible at this point.
 
According to my proprietary model [emoji3], the market is about 25% below where it should be by year end. So the market wants go in that direction when things eventually clear up. The announcements and viruses and economic reports are just noise.
 
pb4uski said:
Seeing what the stock market is doing, I'm becoming increasingly disenchanted with the stock market.... the disconnect between the market and economy is concerning as is the Feds propping up the market and the percentage of trading that is "software programs trading with other software programs". At some point I'll probably buy some long-dated SPY LEAP calls to quell my FOMO, but my appetite for direct investment in stocks is negligible at this point.
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Not trying to talk you into or out of anything, but the market is often "disconnected" from current economics trends because it trades on sentiment and future expectations. This is especially true during times of economic disruption.

The Fed has clearly goosed things but that is benefitting the market and the economy.

Program trading is not new and not going anywhere.

But I get it

I have had thoughts of doing a lot of selling into this rally, it seems very overdone.
 
Nah, I realize the market is forward looking.... but it just seems to me that it currently has on rose colored glasses.
 
Radio interview yesterday I heard from doctor at Cedar Sinai, who has not lost a patient or who has had to put one on a ventilator. He stats that all cases are different, but treats like there are two afflictions, 1) The Covid-19 virus and 2) an autoimmune disease that is unique to each individual who is exposed to the Covid-19 virus. His theory is that each person's autoimmune system acts differently, so that's why some folks are asymptomatic, some get pneumonia, strokes, heart problems, kidney failure, etc. and that is why some drugs are successful for some and not others.

 
pb4uski said:
Seeing what the stock market is doing, I'm becoming increasingly disenchanted with the stock market.... the disconnect between the market and economy is concerning as is the Feds propping up the market and the percentage of trading that is "software programs trading with other software programs". At some point I'll probably buy some long-dated SPY LEAP calls to quell my FOMO, but my appetite for direct investment in stocks is negligible at this point.
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This is exactly how I feel today. I only have 8% in the market right now but I'm unable to commit anything with this kind of manipulation going on.

I also agree that any long positions taken will be via options.
 
I don't know nuthin'. Edit: FWIW we are probably about 60-65% equities right now, maybe a little higher. I haven't checked in a couple of months.

Re Gilead, there is particularly skilled bunch of hucksters promoting the stock. Because of SEC rules, they cannot be direct with their hustle. What they can do is to announce that they are "aware of positive data" purportedly leaked from a study. Did they encourage the leak? We'll never know. Does the leaker or the study's principal investigator hold a significant amount of Gilead stock? We'll never know. My experience tells me that the smart thing is to just stay far away from stocks like this. I may miss a prince once in a while but I haven't kissed a bunch of frogs while looking for him. Kissing investment frogs costs time and money. Theranos, anyone?
 
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Winemaker said:
Radio interview yesterday I heard from doctor at Cedar Sinai, who has not lost a patient or who has had to put one on a ventilator. He stats that all cases are different, but treats like there are two afflictions, 1) The Covid-19 virus and 2) an autoimmune disease that is unique to each individual who is exposed to the Covid-19 virus. His theory is that each person's autoimmune system acts differently, so that's why some folks are asymptomatic, some get pneumonia, strokes, heart problems, kidney failure, etc. and that is why some drugs are successful for some and not others.
Click to expand...

Well I hope his track record holds up! Especially being able to avoid a ventilator which seems like serious bad news! But it sounds like they did have folks on ventilators so the interviewer’s statement was not accurate nor confirmed by the doctor.

What the doctor said was that they learned how to monitor inflammatory markers, and identify the patients in danger of a bad autoimmune response early, and treat these patients with immune system suppressing drugs, which is counterintuitive for virus treatment, and now are able to keep them from going on a ventilator/respirator with this method.
 
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Wait until they announce the unemployment numbers on Thursday - the last three times the market has gone up on the news. I don't really think any of this is being done by individual traders at all but manipulation by the institutional their computer trading.

If you have vision of the ask/bid pricing it would seem to be easy to make money either way - I suspect, just my hunch, that if we had insight into the real manipulation that happens we might run as fast as we could. But with interest rates being at almost zero there is no other real alternative.
 
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Beststash said:
... If you have vision of the ask/bid pricing it would seem to be easy to make money either way ...
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All professionals and many amateurs, i.e., probably 90% of the market, see the bids and the asks. They can't all be making easy money, given that this is a zero sum game.
 
I've given up on trying to figure out how this market thinks. To me it makes absolutely no sense.

The Gillead drug is the one I've been betting on since day once because its well known in the cat rescue arena as its the human version of the feline drug Gillead refused to make because they didn't make money, so it is imported from China (I assume patent infringement). It took 100% death sentence for a cat with a different version of coronavirus and miraculously they now live. It basically just stops the virus from duplicating. So that may make more sense about some of these other comments...ie it doesn't kill it, so your body still has to fight it, so the earlier you get it, the better the results should be as it will stop duplicating and allow your body to catch up/isolate/destroy. It would likely require people with immune issues to still get plasma with antibodies if they can't generate enough on their own but since it stopped getting worse it would hopefully work. Not a doctor, just
based on what I read over the years from cat rescues and then applying it to what I read about COVID. However, all that being said, Gillead was very tight lipped about some of the results and it appeared some of it wasn't going as well as they liked so I had given it only a 50/50 chance.
 
OldShooter said:
All professionals and many amateurs, i.e., probably 90% of the market, see the bids and the asks. They can't all be making easy money, given that this is a zero sum game.
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Those electrons are pretty fast - it seems like it would be hard to beat a computer? :cool:
I especially dislike futures trading in the stock market. I don't remember it being an issue in the 70's?? But maybe I just wasn't aware. Seems like an unfair advantage to my simple mind.
 
99 % of market participants ignore what Ben Graham https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Graham
and his aprentice Waren Buffet call intrinsic value : ( how much cash and debt, and how much earnings a company will throw off over the next 20 years ) very simplified version.

If your equity holdings went down 50% in current price , but still made the same earnings for the next 10 years, would you be comfortable keeping your
" investment " ?

Our financial markets are a large scale perversion of traditional INVESTING.

PS I am checking on amazon and e bay for tinfoil hats, everyone is sold out.
 
pb4uski said:
Seeing what the stock market is doing, I'm becoming increasingly disenchanted with the stock market.... the disconnect between the market and economy is concerning as is the Feds propping up the market and the percentage of trading that is "software programs trading with other software programs". At some point I'll probably buy some long-dated SPY LEAP calls to quell my FOMO, but my appetite for direct investment in stocks is negligible at this point.
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As I was getting my coffee this morning, I was thinking about you.

As I am wishing I had been more into bonds than currently, so much that I keep thinking of selling some stock to be able to buy bonds.
Of course all of that would have been much better using a time machine.
As bond funds are not cheap, and there is the -17% stock drop currently baked in.

My giant fear (fear is the mind killer) a 1929 effect on the stock market, since you haven't mentioned buying LEAPs yet, I thinking you also consider the collapse or serious drop in the market very possible.
 
Well that's in LA right? Supposedly there is evidence the west coast strain came from China and is less lethal than the NY strain which came from Italy.

That could explain some things.
 
Still waiting for " The other shoe to drop " and I can think of five or more, not just one. at this time we are speculating , not investing.
 
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