Well, tbh I feel a bit empty and a bit guilty; especially when I sold my beloved. But yes, I am free of worrying about Mrs Market. All I have left is 15k of D2O and 100k of K2FOA. The latter might well turn out to implode, so I have almost written it off mentally. So Mrs Market cannot really touch my capital for the moment.
How well did I do? Of course I don’t mind telling you. Depends on the timeframe. I have not worked out the exact number yet. We have been talking for roughly 4 years, and you may remember that first year I lost money; quite a bit from memory. Well, since then, slowly but surely I made it all back, and then some. Overall, roughly speaking, I must be about $460k ahead.
The BOQ update was nice, and our plan would have worked to perfection for both of us, had it not been for V. Such is life.
Speaking of V. The inescapable truth is, it has a long incubation period of up to 2-3 weeks, and during that time, the asymptomatic individual is infectious. Mathematically speaking, such a pathogen outbreak is impossible to contain, especially when it spreads to the developing world, like South America and Africa. The general influenza virus has an incubation period of around 4 days, and the individual is usually only infectious the day before symptoms arrive. Such a pathogen outbreak is much easier to control.
So by my reckoning, V will infect millions of people over the coming months, mostly in developing countries no doubt. And even with a mortality rate of around 1%, I am thinking it is likely millions will die. The world governments will be draconian in trying to restrict it, and I think these measures, along with the sickness, will strangle the world economy. I think they know it cannot be contained, but the aim is to slow its spread and buy time. Time to try and tailor a treatment, and even maybe a vaccine. Time to spread out the number of people sick at anyone time, so their health resources don’t become overwhelmed. It can be slowed, but I just don’t believe it can be stopped. So you see, once I accepted this as the most likely scenario, the decision to exit was easy, especially as the world economy was just growing despite a healthy dose of central bank stimulus.
As I said before, chance of upside is small (and chance of big upside almost zero imo), and if I am wrong to have exited, I only lose opportunity cost, but don’t lose money. Chance of downside is large, and chance of significant downside significant imo. And if one also accepts this, the only logical decision is to exit. Which is exactly what I did. Once cases of V were confirmed in Brazil and Algeria (happened last night), it was time for me to get out. Once that decision was made, the sell off was instant.
So what will I do now? I will live vicariously through your holdings. And wait for a time to jump back in, either post market crash, or post V threat eradication. Sure, the market may be a lot higher with the latter, but, as we both know, there will always be opportunities in the market for the patient (hopefully I have acquired this attribute by now).
So that is the way I see it, from the outside looking in now. I am still hunting, even in the current scenario. Just not sure what prey I am looking for.
Looking red out there at time of writing. Good luck tomorrow buddy. I will be rooting for BOQ! And COL. The rest can CODB! Especially you my beloved. I hope you crash to less than 10.....! I might go and dream about that now.
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