Coronavirus Infects Stock Market: Part XXXVI
What will the response be for Covid-20 or some other deadly virus down the road? Imagine what it will be like when there are opposing views within families, never mind on the county, state, and country levels.
Let’s begin with investing. Guess which area has done well. Companies that offer stuff people need, such as consumer staples—specifically dividend payers with a history of increasing them. Compare a tech app on your iPhone you can delete with a swipe of your finger.
How about relationships? When your spouse has a check-list before anyone enters the house, never mind your bed, what will the reaction be when Uncle Joe shows up with a cough?
How about when any old Joe, sitting peacefully in his plane seat, coughs from some dried peanuts?
We travel by boat from Newport, RI to Mattapoisett. An easy route as the crow flies. Some harbors are already closed for the summer to transient boaters. I’ve read others will enforce a two-week quarantine. Looks like our visits will be on hold. Stupid.
Second Amendment lovers think about self-protection viewing guns like shields. Guys like Michael Bloomberg don’t think you need one. Hollywood sells their violence. Perhaps Justice Gorsuch should politely give a copy of his book, A Republic, If You Can Keep It, to Chief Justice Roberts. Gorsuch, along with Justice Clarence Thomas, wrote in favor of the Second Amendment’s protections in a dissent in 2017 “For those of us who work in marbled halls, guarded constantly by a vigilant and dedicated police force, the guarantees of the Second Amendment might seem antiquated and superfluous. But the Framers made a clear choice: They reserved to all Americans the right to bear arms for self-defense.”
What will the country look like in a decade when states act like their own countries, like in Europe, united (if that) by only the U.S. dollar?
Will driving our getaway cars be the new preferred mode of travel? Will it be back to the future with roadside motels replacing germ infected lobbies?
The great school divide expands as some teachers are working harder than ever, while others hide behind their union.
Dick Young notes the pushback against the harbor-poisoning cruise ships that visit Key West, which now bring along virus-infected passengers. He writes, “A wide array of local celebrities, dignitaries, arts supporters, historians, and economists have teamed up to vote the cruise ships out of Key West permanently.”
Anyone one up for a slow boat to China? Bueller?
Will multi-nationals be held to a company-wide standard, or will they be free to operate on a country by country, state by state basis?
The profit source for restaurants is the bar.
The survival rate for most of us is near 100%.
Only you know how you feel during times like these.
Time to review your retirement plan?
Call me.
