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The "stock market" is real. When you buy a share of stock, you give money (through your broker) to a real human being who previously owned that stock. That share of stock means you own an infinitesimal piece of a company. That's a real thing. When you sell that stock, you sell it to another real human being and they (through their broker) give you money for it.

Most of the rest of it is maddenly complicated and often seems completely disconnected from reality. Companies release good quarterly earnings and the stock drops. Companies whose economic prospects are rosy all drop in value because macroeconomic forces completely unrelated to their industries are bad, despite no effect on earnings. TSLA is a thing that consistently loses money but their stock is ~$400-500/share, for some reason...

And then we try to act like the DJIA is a good proxy for the economy, when the DJIA merely comprises the aggregate value of stock prices for just *30* companies.

And that's before we get into "animal spirits" or technical investing--which as far as I can tell is reading a "chart" with absolutely no knowledge of the actual underlying business a company is in.

So... I get that we consider much of it basically imaginary, because it's just buying/selling infinitesimal pieces of companies, often based on rational analysis but often also based on essentially following the trends up and down.

But it's only "imaginary" because we've given it this place of reverence and esteem which exceeds what it is--a place where, based on whatever reason/strategy you choose, you can buy "shares" of ownership in corporations and keep or sell them as you see fit.

To be clear, I am aware the stock market is real. 

The same way I'm aware I should put just about no stock in a faceless twitter "medical examiner employee" 

The "stock market" is real. When you buy a share of stock, you give money (through your broker) to a real human being who previously owned that stock. That share of stock means you own an infinitesimal piece of a company. That's a real thing. When you sell that stock, you sell it to another real human being and they (through their broker) give you money for it.

Most of the rest of it is maddenly complicated and often seems completely disconnected from reality. Companies release good quarterly earnings and the stock drops. Companies whose economic prospects are rosy all drop in value because macroeconomic forces completely unrelated to their industries are bad, despite no effect on earnings. TSLA is a thing that consistently loses money but their stock is ~$400-500/share, for some reason...

And then we try to act like the DJIA is a good proxy for the economy, when the DJIA merely comprises the aggregate value of stock prices for just *30* companies.

And that's before we get into "animal spirits" or technical investing--which as far as I can tell is reading a "chart" with absolutely no knowledge of the actual underlying business a company is in.

So... I get that we consider much of it basically imaginary, because it's just buying/selling infinitesimal pieces of companies, often based on rational analysis but often also based on essentially following the trends up and down.

But it's only "imaginary" because we've given it this place of reverence and esteem which exceeds what it is--a place where, based on whatever reason/strategy you choose, you can buy "shares" of ownership in corporations and keep or sell them as you see fit.

Tesla consistently loses money in large part because they have continually sacrificed the bottom line for the sake of growth. You almost can't grow at the insane pace that they have been growing and make money. It's basically impossible. Especially in a business as capital intensive as building freaking cars. At the end of the day Tesla is similar to Apple or Amazon imo- they have a better product than anyone else they compete with. At the end of the day, it's about the product. And that's why me and you had a little bit of disagreement last year on where they were headed. You thought they were going bankrupt, I thought they were going to take off- they have a clearly superior product to the rest of the market.

Valuation in the stock market is almost always about growth. Investors look for growth above all else. And FOMO on that growth story drives stock prices like Tesla up and up and up. Bezos sacrificed the bottom line for 20 years and poured everything into growing Amazon. His goal every year was to grow, not show as much profit as possible. And now Amazon is probably one of the three greatest, most valuable companies in the entire freaking world along with Apple and Saudi Aramco.

The stock market is real but at the same time it isn't. It's incredibly manipulated by big investors and by media. It's an illusion. It's perception. But perception is reality.

And in terms of actual dollars, it's real but not at the same time. Take Bezos for instance. He's listed as the richest man in the entire world, but I'd bet that 99.9% of his net worth is tied up in Amazon stock. People think he's got $120 billion sitting around in cash or something. He doesn't. Now he probably has some billions in cash, and he can probably go to almost any bank or lender and get 1% interest loan for any amount of money secured against his stock- but he doesn't have $120 billion in cash. And he has so much Amazon stock that if he tried to sell it all at once  and convert it into cash he'd never be able to, and even if he was able to he has so much it would make the share price go into fall and he wouldn't be getting $2,000 a share or whatever the hell it's at now. For some reason a lot of people have a hard time understanding this. They say oh Jeff Bezos should just donate $10 billion! He probably don't got $10 billion in cash laying around to donate.

In terms of straight cash homie- I'd bet that the Saudi king or Bill Gates probably have more cash than any single person. First one is pretty self-explanatory, and Bill Gates has been selling off large chunks of Microsoft stock for 30+ years straight.

Well, that's inappropriate. Ask someone else about meat slicers.

And that's why me and you had a little bit of disagreement last year on where they were headed. You thought they were going bankrupt, I thought they were going to take off- they have a clearly superior product to the rest of the market.

Absolutely. I was highly concerned at the time that they were poorly-capitalized and over-leveraged. They've done well to raise more funds (once when I think they desperately needed it, and the second time when it was advantageous due to high stock price) and they've gotten to the point where I think they're at least close to funding themselves through operations.

I still think they're constantly on thin ice, but so be it. We'll see. 

And in terms of actual dollars, it's real but not at the same time. Take Bezos for instance. He's listed as the richest man in the entire world, but I'd bet that 99.9% of his net worth is tied up in Amazon stock. People think he's got $120 billion sitting around in cash or something. He doesn't. Now he probably has some billions in cash, and he can probably go to almost any bank or lender and get 1% interest loan for any amount of money secured against his stock- but he doesn't have $120 billion in cash. And he has so much Amazon stock that if he tried to sell it all at once  and convert it into cash he'd never be able to, and even if he was able to he has so much it would make the share price go into fall and he wouldn't be getting $2,000 a share or whatever the hell it's at now. For some reason a lot of people have a hard time understanding this. They say oh Jeff Bezos should just donate $10 billion! He probably don't got $10 billion in cash laying around to donate. 

He just got divorced, and this was a big issue. He doesn't have a big pile of cash, he has illiquid stock wealth. And his wife [due to community property] gets half...

The big issues were that he didn't want to give his ex voting stock and partial control over Amazon, so the divorce judgement basically had to turn her portion of the stock into non-voting, and probably has limitations on how much she can sell at once so it doesn't crash the price. 

So yeah... His wealth isn't entirely liquid.

I suspect the economy will open up partially in a week, ten days.  The vulnerable will stay sequestered.  The rest of us may be asked to distance, but go ahead and do stuff.

Maybe. I'm not sure, we'll see in 7-10 days.  If we can protect those most vulnerable, I can see opening things back up to an extent while maintaining precautions.

On comorbidities, from Deborah Birx

“I think every time I’ve been up here about the comorbidities. Most of the people, and we have talked about the Italy data, the majority of the Italians who succumbed to this had three or more comorbidities. So this has been known from the beginning. So those individuals will have an underlying condition, but that underlying condition did not cause their acute death when it’s related to a covid infection. In fact, it’s the opposite. Having an underlying condition and getting this virus, we know it’s particularly damaging to those individuals.”

She reiterated for emphasis, “If you have asthma, if you have renal disease, if you have diabetes, if you have hypertension, these are pre-existing conditions that put you at a greater risk to having a worse outcome.”