First Trust Economic’s weekly COVID-19 Tracker which contains charts and data that they think are important to gain some perspective on the coronavirus pandemic in the U.S.
Category Archives: @Coronavirus, @COVID-19
20 Habits of Successful Traders
In a stock portfolio, large companies in mature industries provide typically provide earnings growth and steady cash flows. With a low beta, these companies also help in creation of a defensive portfolio. However, the objective of creating a diversified portfolio is to beat the index returns. It makes sense to invest in the index if investors can’t beat the index.It is likely to be a difficult task to beat the index without having medium and small size companies in the portfolio
- Learning how to invest doesn’t have to be hard. In fact, it can be simple. Regardless of the current state of the stock market, you should still invest in the market.
- Learn how to find and buy stocks, generate consistent returns, and reduce your risk.
- Always important to remember that equity markets are huge crowds of people attempting to make money at the expense of others.
- Be patient with winning trades and aggressively impatient with losing trades by cutting your loser immediately. Cut losses immediately.
- Making money is more important than being right. The market can stay wrong longer than you can stay solvent. Do what the market is telling you do.
- Look at charts as a picture of where traders are lining up to buy or sell. Charts are simply where traders are lining up.
- Before they enter any trade, they know exactly where they will exit for either a gain or a loss. Know where you’re going to exit before you get in.
- They approach trade number 5 with the same mindset they did on the 4 previous losing trades. Understand that statically chart patterns do not always work.
- Use naked charts and focus on zones. Successful traders rarely use anything but price.
- They realized a long time ago that being uncomfortable is okay. You have to be comfortable being uncomfortable. Will never have 100% complete information. They’re able to make decisions based on incomplete information.
- The markets are their workplace. They are a participant, not an on-looker.
- Stop trying to pick tops and bottoms. Trade when charts are trending. Trade with the trend.
- Stop thinking about the market or stock as being “cheap” or “expensive”. Is someone going to pay more or less for the stock at a later date.
- Buy higher highs and sell lower lows. Trade the trends. Things that are going higher tend to go higher. Things are going lower tend to go lower.
- Change your plan as market change. Be willing to change sides if the market tells them to do so. Wait to see what the market is going to do and trade the trend.
- Trade aggressively when trading is going well and modestly when trades are going badly. If I have three losing trades in a stock in a row, I will reduce trading size on that stock.
- They realize the market will be open again tomorrow. They do not succumb too the fear of missing out. Don’t beat yourself up.
- Never add to a losing trade. Never, ever add to a losing trade.
- Cash is the goal, but never the measure of success. The goal should be did you follow your rules getting into trades and getting out of trades.
- They read books about mobs and riots.
- Provide liquidity to the markets while watching price and volume. Treat trading as a market maker.
- They have a way to gauge fear, greed and speed of the markets: use Tick Charts 233, 612.
- They practice reading the right side of the chart, not the left. Become better at seeing, predicting and reading the patterns before they’re formed.
- Every wealthy trader has an “edge” that can explain to their mothers. As simple as a moving average crossing over another moving average.
- Businessman Risk. Avoid risking more than 2% on any trade. Position size is calculated exactly on risk tolerance. The objective amount they will risk, or willing to lose, on any one trade. An objective way to calculate risk.
- Profit targets are based on average range or something objective. Know the normal behavior of a stock before you trade it.
- One or two trades a month, make their month. Have many more small losers interspersed with big winners
- Confidence decision makers in the face of incomplete information.
- A losing trade does not mean you are a loser. Successful traders do not take the market or a stock loss personally.
- They buy higher highs and sell lower lows.
- Their business isn’t trading — it’s finding the right trades to make money.
- They write down or record every trade — price, thoughts, news, attitudes. Find patterns in your own behaviors.
- Their conviction pa an active trade remains unless something major changes.
- A winning trade does not result in taking on extra risk the next trade.
- Trade the reaction, not the news. Trade the aversion back to the mean. Don’t trade the initial reaction, trade the reaction to the initial reaction to the news.
- Make trading as objective as possible.
- Keep a journal: Price entry and exit, slippage, max profit, max loss,
- Learn as much as you can about trading by reading, listening to experts and seminars. Keep a degree of healthy skepticism.
- Do not get greedy and rush to trade. Take your time to learn how to trade.
- Develop a method to analyze the markets. Markets keep changing. Need different tools for Bull, Bear and transitional markets.
- First goal must be long term survival. Second goal is steady growth of capital. Third goal is making high profits.
- Trader is weakest leak in any trading system. Winner think, feel and believe differently. To be a winner, you must change your personality.
- Mass Psychology: Bulls are buyers, bets on a rally and profits from a rise in prices. Bears are sellers, bets on falling markets and profits fall in prices . Hogs are greedy. Sheep are passive followers.
- Ask is what a seller asks to sell. Bid is what a buyer offers to pay. Sellers sell because they expect prices to fall. Buyers buy because they expect prices to rise. Undecided
Coronavirus Rates Surge in West and South
Several U.S. states continue to set daily records for coronavirus infections as outbreaks surge mostly across the South and West. As of Tuesday, at least 35 states are seeing increases in daily coronavirus cases. The increases are particularly steep Florida, Arizona, California, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Texas. Many of the states are reporting more cases than they’ve ever seen on a daily basis.
Those regions are experiencing higher seven day average infection rates and hospitalizations. The spike in new cases that have outpaced daily infection rates experienced in April.
The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), which causes the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), has proven to be the type of virus that epidemiologists have always feared. The virus spreads easily, no one appears to have immunity to it and it’s much more stealthier than expected. The severity of COVID-19 symptoms can range from very mild to severe. Most people experience only a few minor symptoms, and some people experience no symptoms at all.
With the current level of spread in the West and South, Americans should expect this virus to continue to circulate. Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Diseases and the top U.S. infectious diseases expert, has warned that unless the current trend shifts, the U.S. could see its daily number of new coronavirus cases rise to 100,000 from its current level of around 40,000. However, people can help to curb the spread of infection by:
- Practicing social physical distancing (6 feet or 2 meters)
- Wash your hands often with soap and water for at least 20 seconds, or use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer that contains at least 60% alcohol.
- Cover your face (nose and mouth) with a cloth mask in public spaces.
- Avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth.
- Clean and disinfect high-touch surfaces, such as doorknobs, light switches, electronics and counters, daily.
- Stay home from work, school and public areas if you’re infected, unless you’re going to get medical care.
Yet, it’s important to understand, according to Dr. Fauci, that the only way to successfully stop the spread of the coronavirus will be an effective vaccine that proves safe and has shown some efficacy by creating coronavirus neutralizing antibodies in people. There are currently 17 potential SARS-CoV-2 vaccines in clinical trials being tested on human patients across the globe.
References:
- https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/29/cdc-says-us-has-way-too-much-virus-to-control-pandemic-as-cases-surge-across-country.html?__source=iosappshare%7Ccom.microsoft.onenote.shareextension
- https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2020/06/30/Dr-Fauci-warns-US-COVID-19-cases-could-reach-100000-a-day/1971593516091/
- https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/symptoms-causes/syc-20479963
Three New Symptoms of Coronavirus Infection
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) added three more symptoms to its official list of coronavirus symptoms. The following symptoms, according to the CDC, can be indicative of the novel coronavirus infection:
- Congestion or runny nose,
- Nausea or vomiting, and
- Diarrhea
COVID-19 affects different people in different ways. Most infected people will develop mild to moderate illness and recover without hospitalization. The complete list of symptoms, according to the CDC.
Most common symptoms include:
- Fever
- Dry cough
- Tiredness
Less common symptoms:
- Aches and pains
- Sore throat
- Diarrhea
- Conjunctivitis
- Headache
- Loss of taste or smell
- Rash on skin, or discoloration of fingers or toes
- Congestion or runny nose
- Nausea or vomiting
Serious symptoms:
- Difficulty breathing or shortness of breath
- Chest pain or pressure
- Loss of speech of movement
Seek immediate medical attention if you have serious symptoms. On average it takes 5–6 days from when someone is infected with the virus for symptoms to show, however it can take up to 14 days
Read more: https://apple.news/Awg8eB6MFTUKtV9Q388kS4Q
https://youtu.be/W-zhhSQDD1U
References:
Steroid found to help prevent deaths of sickest coronavirus patients | Guardian
Trial in Britain shows dexamethasone responsible for survival of one in eight patients on ventilators
A cheap steroid has become the first life-saving treatment in the Covid-19 pandemic, described by scientists as a major breakthrough and raising hopes for the survival of thousands of the most seriously ill.
Dexamethasone is a corticosteroid that prevents the release of substances in the body that cause inflammation. Dexamethasone is cheap, available from any pharmacy, and easily obtainable anywhere in the world.
Dexamethasone is used to treat many different inflammatory conditions such as allergic disorders and skin conditions. Dexamethasone is used to treat conditions such as arthritis, blood/hormone/immune system disorders, allergic reactions, certain skin and eye conditions, breathing problems, certain bowel disorders, and certain cancers.
Investigators said the drug was responsible for the survival of one in eight of the sickest patients – those who were on ventilators – in the Recovery trial, the biggest randomised, controlled trial of coronavirus treatments in the world.
Dexamethasone reduced deaths by one-third in ventilated patients (rate ratio 0.65 [95% confidence interval 0.48 to 0.88]; p=0.0003) and by one fifth in other patients receiving oxygen only (0.80 [0.67 to 0.96]; p=0.0021). There was no benefit among those patients who did not require respiratory support (1.22 [0.86 to 1.75; p=0.14).
References:
Miscalculating Risk: Confusing Scary With Dangerous | Brian Wesbury, First Trust Economics Blog
“Coronavirus…is the first social media pandemic.”
The coronavirus kills, everyone knows it. But this isn’t the first deadly virus the world has seen, so what happened? Why did we react the way we did? One answer is that this is the first social media pandemic. News and narratives travel in real-time right into our hands.
Brian Wesbury, Chief Economist
This spreads fear in a way we have never experienced. Drastic and historically unprecedented lockdowns of the economy happened and seemed to be accepted with little question.
We think the world is confusing “scary” with “dangerous.” They are not the same thing. It seems many have accepted as fact that coronavirus is one of the scariest things the human race has ever dealt with. But is it the most dangerous? Or even close?
There are four ways to categorize any given reality. It can be scary but not dangerous, scary and dangerous, dangerous but not scary, or not dangerous and not scary.
Clearly, COVID-19 ranks high on the scary scale. A Google news search on the virus brings up over 1.5 billion news results. To date, the virus has tragically killed nearly 100,000 people in the United States, and more lives will be lost. But on a scale of harmless to extremely dangerous, it would still fall into the category of slightly to mildly dangerous for most people, excluding the elderly and those with preexisting medical conditions.
In comparison, many have no idea that heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States, killing around 650,000 people every year, 54,000 per month, or approximately 200,000 people between February and mid-May of this year. This qualifies as extremely dangerous. But most people are not very frightened of it. A Google news search for heart disease brings up around 100 million results, under one-fifteenth the results of the COVID-19 search.
Brian Wesbury is Chief Economist at First Trust Advisors L.P.
Moderna and Sorrento Therapeutics’ Vaccines Show Positive Results
Updated: Friday, 5/22/2020 9:45 am
Moderna, the Massachusetts biotechnology company behind a leading effort to create a coronavirus vaccine, published positive data from its phase one human trial on its potential vaccine. The National Institutes of Health has partnered with Moderna to accelerate development of their vaccine candidate. The company plans to launch a large clinical trial in July aimed at showing whether the vaccine works.
The company reported that in eight patients who had been followed for a month and a half, the vaccine at low and medium doses triggered blood levels of virus-fighting (neutralizing) antibodies that were similar or greater than those found in COVID-19 patients who recovered. That would suggest, but doesn’t prove, that it triggers some level of immunity.
The neutralizing antibody-rich blood plasma donated by patients who have recovered is separately being tested to determine whether it is an effective therapy or preventive measure for Covid-19.
The vaccine uses a new process that is much faster than older methods of making vaccines. The vaccine includes a short segment of messenger RNA (mRNA) that is made in a lab and codes for the viral spike protein. It does not include any form of live virus, and the trial does not expose participants to the virus.
Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told NPR that “I think it is conceivable, if we don’t run into things that are, as they say, unanticipated setbacks, that we could have a vaccine that we could be beginning to deploy at the end of this calendar year, December 2020, or into January, 2021”.
Dr. Carlos del Rio, an Emory University professor of medicine told CNBC that a Covid-19 vaccine could be ready for distribution by the end of 2020 but cautioned that it’s an unprecedented timeline. Effectively, “…in a 65-day window, researchers have isolated and identified the virus and begun testing a potential vaccine on humans”, Dr. del Rio said. “That has never, ever occurred before.”
Moderna’s study is being carried out at Atlanta’s Emory University’s Vaccine and Treatment Evaluation Unit and the Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute in Seattle.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is funding construction of factories for the 7 most promising Covid-19 vaccine candidates.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/05/18/coronavirus-vaccine-first-results/
Antibodies are one of the ways the human body fights infection from the coronavirus. Researchers believe testing for covid-19 antibodies can lead to a virus treatment.
Small-cap biotech company Sorrento Therapeutics (SRNE) CEO Dr. Henry Ji announced that Sorrento had discovered an anti-SARS-Cov-2 antibody, dubbed STI-1499, that has demonstrated 100% inhibition of COVID-19 in an in vitro infection experiment at a very low antibody concentration and flushed out what’s also known as the virus from the body within four days.
Dr. Ji claims this is a cure, saying, “We want to emphasize there is a cure. There is a solution that works 100%. If we have the neutralizing antibody in your body, you don’t need the social distancing. You can open up a society without fear.” This antibody works by blocking the coronavirus’ spike proteins from attaching to a receptor on the surface of health surface called ACE2.
Sorrento said it will continue testing the product in the hopes of getting it approved to treat COVID-19.
References:
CDC Guidelines for Reopening
Testing, tracking and tracing are required to reopen and for the economy to return to normal before a COVID-19 vaccine
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released 60 pages of guidance for reopening schools, mass transit and non-essential businesses.
The plan outlines three “phase-specific thresholds” for reducing social distancing measures and proposes the use of six “epidemiologic gating” indicators to assess when to move through another phase.
According to CDC’s guidance, “extensive, rapid, and widely available COVID-19 testing is essential”.
The guideline recommends an approach using multiple surveillance systems and epidemiology networks to monitor the progression and impact of COVID-19 spread in the United States.
The CDC expects that the surveillance data will create situational awareness which allows timely monitoring of the spread and intensity of COVID-19 disease, and permits the efficient targeting of public health measures.
Furthermore, surveillance data will allow governmental agencies to understand overall impact and epidemic characteristics of COVID-19 infection across a spectrum of conditions to include:
- asymptomatic infections
- symptomatic infection
- medically attended outpatient and ambulatory visits
- hospitalizations
- deaths
The federal health agency warned that some amount of community mitigation will be necessary until a vaccine or an effective drug to treat for COVID-19 is widely available.
The coronavirus has infected more than 1.5 million people and caused almost 100k COVID-19 related deaths in the United States, and resulted in more than 38 million Americans filing unemployment claims.
References:
Safety Advice for Reopening | Wall Street Journal
As businesses reopen, public-health experts provide guidance on venturing out safely
Public-health experts generally agree that to reopen society safely, communities need widespread testing so officials can be confident that the number of coronavirus cases in the population is low and people who are positive can be quarantined.
Communities also need a system to trace people who have come into contact with positive cases so they too can be isolated, doctors say. “Otherwise you simply let everybody out for a few days and two weeks later have a surge in cases and have to start all over again,” says Gregory Poland, director of the Mayo Clinic’s Vaccine Research Group in Rochester, Minn.
The U.S. so far largely lacks widespread testing and tracing, he says. “Most communities do not have that capacity.”
So the safest move for most people is still to stay home as much as possible. But if you do go out, there are ways to reduce the risks. Here’s what the experts say:
Sources:
Sunlight Doesn’t Kill The Virus
There are an unknown number of Americans who have been or are infected with COVID-19 coronavirus, but experienced either mild or no symptoms. And, despite the flattening of the infection curve and the reopening of states’ economies across the country, it is important to remember that the virus has not gone away.
Additionally, many of the largest outbreaks have been in regions where the weather is cooler, leading to speculation that the disease might begin to tail off with the arrival of summer. However, health experts are uncertain that the spread of the coronavirus will diminish, or take a sabbatical like the seasonal influenza, with the arrival of the heat, humidity and sunlight of summer.
Sunlight contains three types of ultraviolet light — UVA, which tans and ages your skin, and can cause eye damage; UVB, which burns and also ages skin; and UVC is harmful and quite good at destroying genetic material.
There is no data on whether the UVA rays of the sun can inactivate this coronavirus. However, research on SARS, another coronavirus, found that exposing that virus to UVA light for 15 minutes did nothing to reduce its spread
In contrast, UVC light has proven to be more promising versus the coronavirus. This relatively obscure part of the spectrum consists of a shorter, more energetic wavelength of light. It is particularly good at destroying genetic material – whether in humans or viral particles. Fortunately, UVC is filtered out by ozone in the atmosphere long before it reaches a person’s fragile skin.
So, the takeaways are to stay safe, practice social physical distancing , wash your hands frequently and wear a face mask when out in public.
References:
- https://www.gatesnotes.com/Health/Seattle-Coronavirus-Assessment-Network?WT.mc_id=20200512100000_SCAN_BG-EM_&WT.tsrc=BGEM
- https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/04/17/836830157/coronavirus-faqs-can-sunlight-kill-the-virus-how-risky-is-an-elevator-ride
- https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200323-coronavirus-will-hot-weather-kill-covid-19