Executive Summary:
Three weeks ago I predicted that the U.S. death toll from COVID-19 would reach 20,000 by April 15th. In this article I will tell you what you should expect next.
Article:
I saw this coronavirus pandemic coming back in February. I first warned our premium subscribers and then published a free article on our site and on Yahoo Finance with the title Recession is Imminent: We Need A Travel Ban NOW. We shorted market ETFs and some travel related stocks to protect our portfolios against a 30% decline in the S&P 500 Index.
We warned our regular readers and tried to reach as many people as we could by publishing alarmist sounding articles on Yahoo. Three weeks ago, on March 20th, I published another article with the title “Hell is Coming: Here is the Mathematical Proof”. At the time, the U.S. death toll stood at 205 and nobody in the mainstream media was mentioning the imminence of tens of thousands of people dying in a matter of few weeks. (I also recommended a long position in Tenet Healthcare (NYSE:THC) in that same article when it was trading at $13. THC shares are up 60% since then; you’re welcome.)
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President Trump irresponsibly downplayed the coronavirus threat for a very long time. I blame him for the unnecessary deaths of thousands of people. Democrats’ champion governor Cuomo was slow to react to the virus. I blame him for the unnecessary deaths of thousands of people. New York City mayor de Blasio was even worse than Cuomo; he resisted closing New York City schools as late as March 14th. The people who got infected on March 14th were dying yesterday, April 8th. It takes an average of 24 days for someone who is infected with the new coronavirus to die.
Most Democrats and Republican politicians are in the pockets of corporations. They care more about corporate profits and campaign donations that they receive from corporations than they do about American lives and jobs. For the past 40 years, corporations have been shutting down U.S. operations and moving to countries that have cheap labor, low tax rates and nonexistent environmental laws. As a result, stock prices skyrocketed for the past 40 years, whereas real wages stagnated and jobs were lost to countries like China and Mexico.
Today, we are begging China for ventilators, masks, and other PPEs. We know that our people have to wear N95 masks, but since the few we do have aren’t sufficient enough for our healthcare workers, we are telling the general public to use bandanas and dish towels. This is what we get for selling out American workers for higher corporate profits.
Elections are coming up. We can’t vote for politicians who are in the pockets of corporations and who can’t pledge to bringing American jobs back anymore. This is the time to act. We can’t outsource our national security to China or other countries. President Trump has the right intentions, but the wrong policies. Taxing only China won’t bring back American jobs; it will shift them somewhere else. We are going to discuss the appropriate policies in the coming days, so keep following us.
We are in the middle of a global pandemic. Hindsight is 20/20, but we told you about the tens of thousands of American deaths when the total U.S. death toll stood at 205. Thankfully, some fellow Americans read our article and took action to protect themselves and other people. In that article that was published March 20th, we predicted 12,800 U.S. deaths for April 7th (the actual death toll was 12,895) and more than 20,000 by April 15th. We also said the following:
“The attacks on 9/11 killed around 3000 people. We will be reporting a 9/11 every three days. That’s why we say “hell is coming””
Don’t take this as arrogance. There will always be ignorant readers (internet trolls?) who might dismiss me as just another talking head. This is why I talk about my track record as much as possible.
So, what is coming next?
Social distancing and lockdowns work. The number of deaths in Italy reached a plateau 17-18 days after the national lockdown, stayed at this plateau for 5 days, and has been declining since.
The number of deaths in China reached a plateau 20 days after their lockdown, stayed there for 6 days, and started to decline. China’s daily death toll declined at a rate of around 40% per week after peaking.
To be honest, our lockdowns haven’t been as strict as the Italians’ lockdown and some U.S. states like Florida just recently started catching up. New York State is peaking right now. In about a week, we will see the death toll in New York State start to go down consistently. By Mother’s Day, the daily death toll will be in teens and there will be very few new infections.
New York City will be back in business probably around that time (it depends on how aggressive Cuomo will be). Other states will ease their lockdowns a week or two after New York.
Just a few days ago, President Trump and Dr. Fauci used a model that predicted 100,000 U.S. deaths by May 23rd. Yesterday, they revised their numbers all the way down to 60,000. Right now my model predicts a lower figure than even 60,000 for May 23rd. Obviously my prediction depends on how long the current lockdowns stay in effect. If the states start to ease current lockdowns on May 1st or earlier, my estimate will change.
How about the financial markets?
Corporations are greedy and they are failing American people while enriching themselves and their shareholders. They are resilient in their efforts to protect their profits and share prices. They control the Federal Reserve, the Congress, and the President. Donald Trump wasn’t successful in bringing a lot of American jobs back from China or Mexico, but he managed to gift a huge corporate tax cut for his beloved corporations. Fed Chairman Powell and politicians bent over backwards in recent weeks to re-inflate the stock prices. So, as an investor, I rarely bet against American stocks.
In February we started shorting the stock market, but we reversed our course on March 25th when the S&P 500 Index closed at 2475. Right now, the S&P 500 Index is trading at 2815. Yesterday I shared this video presentation about COVID-19 by two hedge fund managers. One of the hedge fund managers is Phill Gross; he is a billionaire fund manager and very talented. You have to watch his presentation and comments about the coronavirus. The other hedge fund manager explains why he sees the S&P 500 Index reaching 3050 by the end of this year.
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Disclosure: Long THC, SPY and SPY put options. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
