Five Years, Lord Willing

[SavingWithBabies]

Wait so you thought you actually had it? Sorry, I was the one misreading! Glad you're okay.

[Jason]

Thank you.

A few weeks back I spent at least an hour in a 100 year old building that was a Petri dish of anachronistic US construction practices. There were definitely antiquated floor tile and possibly exposed asbestos. Ancient equipment was never removed. I had to sit down at one point due to reaction. Soon after, I started evidencing symptoms similar to COVID-19. However, I have never been feverish or short of breath. I am assuming I picked up an allergen. The coincidental nature though is suspicious. My wife and I are employing social distancing and so far she seems OK. Based on anecdotal accounts of mild cases, I do not seem to have it but I might never know. I am taking precautions as though I do.

Yesterday, I finally took a deep dive into the financial aspect. It was a kick in the nuts but all things considered, not a complete disaster. The best we decision made was taking profits at end of year and removing all consumer debt so essentially we are just carrying mortgage debt and small 0 percent car loan. We did have to buy a new computer.

I have decided not to sell anything and am mentally vulturing but have yet to pull trigger on buys. Disney looks absurdly cheap at this point.

[ertyu]

No fever is indeed an argument in favor of allergy over corona. As for buying shit, I've placed orders for prices I find outright ridiculous. If they fill, they fill. If not, hopefully cash will keep purchasing power at least a while.

[SavingWithBabies]

@ertyu Do you basically do a market limit order for 60 days at a price you'd like to pay? How do you prevent going negative (like if you have $2k on hand but put in 3 $1k orders)? Or do you always keep cash balance high enough to pay for all outstanding orders?

[ertyu]

@swb, first, the prices are sometimes so ridiculously low and BS that some of them would probably not be reached. They will certainly not all be reached within, say, a week, and I'll definitely check how my acct is doing before then. This works for me because I'm fine being in cash. Psychologically, I alternate between fomo ("what if this is the lowest price and i miss the bottom?") and fear that inflation will eat all my cash away and all my life's work would've been for nothing. tl;dr: still a basket-case lol

[Jason]

(1) Corona conditions are really not that much different than usual except we are having groceries delivered. I believe, as is to be expected, they are gauging and we have decided to be generous with tipping because these people are risking their lives to bring us tomato sauce so the costs are up. However, no gasoline and other incidentals, so spending is down. It is also making us more frugal. Half-portions of food, cutting napkins in half, counting toilet paper squares etc. Plus staring at these books. Christ. I will never, ever buy another fucking book. We have thought of re-engaging streaming but have decided against.

(2) Net worth down slightly less than 10%, so as of today, basic correction. One holding that has been decimated is TTD. Like 2008, advertising evaporates. And of course Boeing. But ultimately that's like $1,500.00. Incompetence, wrapped in malfeasance, with a pandemic bow on top. Assholes. I would say they deserve it except I'm a shareholder. OKTA has weathered storm. Plus I have made out with Zoom which I'm holding because it has become a verb. Products that become verbs are good. Well, not including Edsel. And New Coke. It's experiencing exponential grown parallelling the virus itself so of course every bored hacker is home fucking with people using it. It's like the guy who hacked into Alexa and threw the n-word at that little girl. I'm almost ashamed of how many I have watched that one. "Mommy!!!!"

(3) My sense of dread has increased. Based on my religious worldview, death is always on the table. I don't want to die of this though. It's very painful. If it was a virus that caused a pleasant death, like you have a huge orgasm and die of the endorphin rush, I'd probably be out there licking door knobs and helping old ladies cross the street. So, more than anything else, this is a psychological event.

[Jason]

Hope everyone and their families are safe and sound. Ok, enough of the pleasantries. Brass tacks.

Net worth whiplash during Shit Storm:

March 1- 616K
March 5 - 637K Monthly High, All Time High
March 23 - 518K - Monthly Low. Equivalent to November, 2019 a/k/a Fuck Me Day.
March 31 - 568K
Today: 611K
Biggest day swing -37K

Off all time high - 4%.
Off End of Last Month - .008%

All things considered, I can't complain but that's not going to stop me. And of course, there is more whiplash on the horizon.

I have literally done nothing during this time. Not one buy, not one sell. I read. I listen. Yet I now I know nothing so therefore I do nothing. And for better or worse, I live to see another day. One lesson - build up cash reserves. Another lesson - "normal" is a construct. Death and suffering although unnatural (my theology speaking) is built into the natural order. Our technocratic society based on the false premise of progress is currently engaged in one long hissy fit against the inevitable, periodic interruption of our false premise of human autonomy. Death. It's coming. For you. For me. Just like it did for Suo's cat. That being said a US 3.8 trillion dollar budget busy spending time studying "Flipper's use of his asshole as a sexual organ and what that means for us" didn't do its job when it most counted.

[SavingWithBabies]

I've been feeling the whiplash too. I did sell but only the stuff I bought on the way down after I realized I was short on cash and my income was going to be negatively impacted. For the first time, I can somewhat relate to those that are "sell everything" but it really does feel like this time things might be different. But if it is that different, we're so fucked that any action seems like it would be futile. So best to assume "happy go lucky" and "it'll all work out" and let it ride? I think my strategy is sort of the later but mostly I'll just keep on working as I can for now and not worry about it because I can't really do jack about it but I can keep working when things turn around.

[Jason]

A mantra I have adopted courtesy of The Motley Fool - "Be very impatient to sell." I had significant losses in ATVI which rebounded due to lock down video game playing. My DIS is now red. My BA is redder than the inside of one of their crashed 737's, I just hate selling. I have identified those holdings that have sustained their gains throughout this event- OKTA, NVDA - and if I need to go there I'll take some gains. But until I have to, I am not.

[ertyu]

imo both dis and ba will see better days. dis because people who go to their parks are batshit anyway, so they will go virus or not, and ba because they're going to be bailed out and, as an asset-heavy company, will do better once the inflation hits. Sell DIS at reopening hype, in the mean time sell calls on it

[Lemur]

I'd consider profit taking on ZOOM. News today is google jumping on that game and offering a product for free but I could be wrong, we know how Google+ turned out.

[Jason]

imo both dis and ba will see better days.

I don't know. I think I put the wamma jamma on both these companies. I fully anticipate that the day after the vaccine is announced, a full capacity 737 crashes into a Disney Cruise ship.

My Zoom profit is about 137% down from 160% a few days ago. Fauci gets optimistic - Disney goes up. Zoom goes down. I think Zoom has legs. Facebook introduced a service last week. All the heavies are going after it. I'm thinking it could get bought.

[ertyu]

I'm thinking it could get bought.

even with all the security issues?

[SavingWithBabies]

The thing about Zoom is the tech it's built on has been changing rapidly over the past 4-5 years. The problems they solved are now being solved with standards and people are going to build on those standards (well, they already are building on those standards)[*]. Zoom is adapting and using those standards too but the tech-side is not high value in a sense. Of course, the market share/ownership/users is of value as is the brand. But I think it's too big to get bought cheaply for tech and the tech isn't the primary attraction. So a purchaser would need to be someone like Microsoft who has been buying and keeping brands running (ie Github). I suspect though that it being a non-USA company is an overall negative and a potential cultural issue around getting the deal done. I am just guessing about all that though besides the tech and of course I'm guessing about that too except some factual bits I've read in terms of Zoom's tech usage and my own research into the standards.

* This pattern is repeated over and over where someone solves something technically and launches a business, it grows big, standards emerge, more implementations emerge of any tricky technical bit and/or standards pave over issues and the tech becomes easy for even a tiny startup to build upon.

[Jason]

(@) SWB - point taken

In a nutshell, both "Zoom" and "Zoombombing" have entered the popular lexicon as verbs within the past few months reflecting that its astronomical growth has been both a blessing and a curse. User base is up 100 million but unfortunately includes hackers whipping out their dicks during PHD defenses (which, depending on the topic, may actually be appropriate). This has led to some high profile - US government, Microsoft - potential users publicly stating that their employees are not to use the service.

Will Zoom become the poster child of "remember Corona 2020" nostalgia or will it survive and go on? Should I have sold at $169? Who knows. It's popularity has awakened the sleeping Goliaths. I bought it late last year based on an in-depth analysis on The Motley Fool (most of which I did not understand but the guy is known to be smart) before some asshole a world away finger fucked a water logged bat setting off some type of natural vengeance hell bent on exterminating the world's population of grandmothers and paralyzing the planet. I mean seriously, what the fuck. Really. You can't make this shit up. I feel like Albert Camus in between watching bears fighting each other with John Madden overdubs. Any ways, hopefully, I'll live and make a few bucks off of it. Who the fuck knows anymore.

[Jason]

SWB called it. Zoom made their first acquisition today - Keybase - not surprisingly, an identity security company. Market responded positively. Part of a plan to solve security issues within 90 days.

I own FB (hate the company, love the stock) and when reading that they rolled out a service competing with Zoom realized the extent to which this pandemic is expanding the FAANG hegemony. For a company (along with Google) that was on the anti-trust hot seat a mere months ago to encroach upon another industry the second the government takes their eye off the ball, it just proves that not only do they not care but would use the government's focus on a crisis to sneak into another industry. Mark Zuckerberg has to be the most odious corporate titan of recent memory. God bless him.

[Jason]

Net Assets: 801,768
Net Worth: 656,746
Debt: 145,022

Covid Big Winners: DOCU, ZM, TWLO, NVDA,
Covid Big Losers: DIS, GS, BA, SPG, WELL

Net worth at all time. Now +3% since declaration of pandemic. First time we have seen +800K. It's now a net worth goal. Have been saving cash for first time - now have 11K. Working towards 100K. First time completely free from consumer debt.

Most of the stocks I started loading up in fall. TWLO spiked 40% day of earnings now up close to 100%. Zoom is %150, NVDA is 75%. DOCU 100%. DIS down 25%. SPG, BA, WELL completely tanked in 100% multiples. I actually bought some WELL yesterday. COVID accelerated change. Threw everyone off the bus in two to three months as opposed to two to three years but this is where we were headed. I have hope in DIS because people are materialistic, shallow idiots, and DIS is not offering discounts so they anticipate crazy pent up demand. WELL because people will continue to get old and die. Not much for BA, GS, SPG. Buffet just bailed pretty much completely from GS.

[Jason]

I was warned not to buy BA before the pandemic by those on this board. Seppia said bad idea. It's been the stock equivalent of the tv series Lost. The plane crash was just the beginning of the problem. Morally suspect leadership, pandemic, Warren Buffet vacates airlines. Yesterday Delta announced discontinuation of 777's. My only decision is whether to sell out or hope I can be made whole on my deathbed which will probably end with a Boeing flying into my nursing home. MY SPCE has also been clobbered but its a negligible investment.

One I forgot to mention is PYPL. I have buying since 2018 but it never broke out until recently. Cash is now truly disgusting and everything is moving towards no touch pay so even handing a card over is going away.

[ertyu]

The argument for "sell": would you buy it today at the current price? No? Then sell. In addition: what is the opportunity cost of not selling? If you were to sell, what alternative use do you have for the cash and how much will it generate?

The argument for "don't sell": all the things you listed: buffet vacating airlines, pandemic, crap leadership. All those things are known knowns and make people feel pessimistic. Could it be the worst of the pessimism is already baked in the price, and things have nowhere to go but up from here? BA will certainly take another tumble if we retest the lows, but you could argue they are a strategic industry and may get "help" that the mkt isn't anticipating. Additionally: BA is asset-heavy. You *want* the asset-heavy shit when inflation hits. Counter-argument: so are airlines. Buffet vacating probably implies he anticipates deflation first (he does anticipate inflation eventually, he has spoken against bonds in relation to stocks on a couple of occasions).

Imo, if you are certain about getting out, consider selling the furthest-dated atm covered puts you can for additional income.

[Jason]

On the buy side: Industry is still bi-cameral, company will most likely be tethered to America's recovery from Pandemic both financially and symbolically.

On the sell side: My losses are so steep, it will most likely take years to be made whole. The right high flying SAS would get me there faster.

I hate selling. If I was to bet on recovery, I'd go Disney over BA.