{"id":51414,"date":"2020-08-10T16:12:13","date_gmt":"2020-08-10T20:12:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/?p=51414"},"modified":"2020-08-10T16:12:13","modified_gmt":"2020-08-10T20:12:13","slug":"tech-stocks-are-having-a-second-bad-day-but-there-is-good-news-on-the-virus-front-really","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/?p=51414","title":{"rendered":"Tech stocks are having a second bad day. But there is good news on the virus front. Really."},"content":{"rendered":"

Monday August 10. Tech stocks are having their second bad day. Here’s the last two days of Nasdaq — today and Friday.<\/p>\n

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These two days are more of a blip than a trend in this year’s Nasdaq. Hence I’m not worried.<\/p>\n

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To my brain, the major factor determining where we go from now is the virus, which has caused trillions of dollars of damage to the economy and to the millions of people who’ve lost their jobs, heir homes, their cars and busted up their marriages.<\/p>\n

Hence it’s best for me to start today’s blog with upbeat information on vaccines and cures.<\/p>\n

Bill Gates is surprisingly upbeat on us defeating the coronavirus<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

He gave an interview to Wired Magazine.<\/p>\n

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The caption on this photo reads, “Despite trillions of dollars of economic damage, Bill Gates is optimistic that a strong pipeline of therapies and vaccines will carry the US through the pandemic.”<\/em><\/p>\n

Gates is the guy who warned us of this pandemic years ago in\u00a0 a prescient 2015 TED talk. He’s also the guy who heads the largest private foundation in the world and is giving huge money to vaccine makers and is giving (largely, unheeded) advice to the Federal Government and its agencies.<\/p>\n

Here’s an excerpt from this savvy interview:<\/p>\n

At this point, are you optimistic?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yes. You have to admit there\u2019s been trillions of dollars of economic damage done and a lot of debts, but the innovation pipeline on scaling up diagnostics, on new therapeutics, on vaccines is actually quite impressive. And that makes me feel like, for the rich world, we should largely be able to end this thing by the end of 2021, and for the world at large by the end of 2022. That is only because of the scale of the innovation that\u2019s taking place. Now whenever we get this done, we will have lost many years in malaria and polio and HIV and the indebtedness of countries of all sizes and instability. It\u2019ll take you years beyond that before you\u2019d even get back to where you were at the start of 2020. It\u2019s not World War I or World War II, but it is in that order of magnitude as a negative shock to the system.<\/p>\n

In March it was unimaginable that you\u2019d be giving us that timeline and saying it\u2019s great.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well it\u2019s because of innovation that you don\u2019t have to contemplate an even sadder statement, which is this thing will be raging for five years until natural immunity is our only hope.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s talk vaccines, which your foundation is investing in. Is there anything that\u2019s shaping up relatively quickly that could be safe and effective?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Before the epidemic came, we saw huge potential in the RNA vaccines\u2014Moderna<\/a>,\u00a0Pfizer\/BioNTech<\/a>, and\u00a0CureVac<\/a>. Right now, because of the way you manufacture them, and the difficulty of scaling up, they are more likely\u2014if they are helpful\u2014to help in the rich countries. They won\u2019t be the low-cost, scalable solution for the world at large. There you\u2019d look more at\u00a0AstraZeneca<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0Johnson & Johnson<\/a>. This disease, from both the animal data and the phase 1 data, seems to be very vaccine preventable. There are questions still. It will take us awhile to figure out the duration [of protection], and the efficacy in elderly, although we think that\u2019s going to be quite good. Are there any side effects, which you really have to get out in those large phase 3 groups and even after that through lots of monitoring to see if there are any autoimmune diseases or conditions that the vaccine could interact with in a deleterious fashion.<\/p>\n

Wired asked him if he got sick…<\/p>\n

Speaking of therapeutics, if you were in the hospital and you have the disease and you\u2019re looking over the doctor\u2019s shoulder, what treatment are you going to ask for?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Remdesivir<\/a>. Sadly the trials in the US have been so chaotic that the actual proven effect is kind of small. Potentially the effect is much larger than that. It\u2019s insane how confused the trials here in the US have been. The supply of that is going up in the US; it will be quite available for the next few months. Also\u00a0dexamethasone<\/a>\u2014it\u2019s actually a fairly cheap drug\u2014that\u2019s for late-stage disease.<\/p>\n

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I’m assuming you\u2019re not going to have trouble paying for it, Bill, so you could ask for anything.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, I don\u2019t want special treatment, so that\u2019s a tricky thing. Other antivirals are two to three months away. Antibodies are two to three months away. We\u2019ve had about a factor-of-two improvement in hospital outcomes already, and that\u2019s with just remdesivir and dexamethasone. These other things will be additive to that.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The interview is worth reading. Click here.<\/strong><\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Stock stuff:<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

+ Microsoft will overpay for Tik Tok and will probably mismanage it, though not as bad an Intel, Verizon or AT&T have done with their recent acquisitions. Read more on Microsoft and TikTok\u00a0here.<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0 Most acquisitions don’t work because the new owners ignore the old management, which then leaves. (Been there, done that. Been ignored.)<\/p>\n

+ Why is Verizon spending so much to advertise 5G, when its 4G and LTE are so awful in vast swaths of mid-New York State, like Columbia County where I am. And what can I possibly do to get 5G, anyway? Buy an iPhone 12 or iPhone 13? They exist?<\/p>\n

Stock philosophy<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

I don’t like investing in things you can find, grow or produce quickly — for example, oil, gold, commodities, cannabis (marijuana) and … hand sanitizer. A few months ago, it sold for $50 a gallon, but then everyone got into that “booming” business and it’s now $10 a gallon. Personally, I prefer soap. Good old Dove.<\/p>\n

Its a good time for new ideas<\/strong><\/p>\n

My tennis partner, Mark Johnson, berates me\u00a0because I don’t realize that 65% of the world goes to the Internet through their smartphone and that most people (including everyone’s customers) use texting.<\/p>\n

Most landlines don’t take texts which is a pain. Now there’s a $16 a month way. It’s called www.TextMeAnywhere.com.<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Send me a text to my landline five one eight three nine two thirty three hundred and I’ll reply from my laptop. It’s neat.<\/p>\n

In case you’re wondering<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

What is QAnon?<\/strong>
\nIt’s a conspiracy theory claiming that world leaders, Democrats, and “deep state” U.S. intelligence officers are all involved in a global child sex trafficking ring that President Trump and his supporters are working to expose and destroy.<\/p>\n

QAnon is gaining huge numbers of followers by the day and will soon have representation in Congress. Read more here.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Sometimes my masochism runs rampant<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The latest fashion in suckering investors into advisory services are long videos that prattle on for eternity about the forces of doom and gloom descending on us all. Of the genre, this is the best one. I actually listened to for nearly half an hour. I really wanted to hear how many words could be strung together to, in the end, say absolutely nothing, Except you should subscribe to Stansberry Research, which may or may not do good work.<\/p>\n

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Here you are. I couldn’t have said it better<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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\nHow to shop during the pandemic (This is priceless)<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

A little old lady went to the grocery store to buy cat food. She picked up three cans and took them to the check out counter.<\/p>\n

The girl at the cash register said, “I’m sorry, but we cannot sell you cat food without proof that you have a cat. A lot of old people buy cat food to eat, and the management wants proof that you are buying the cat food for your cat.” The little old lady went home, picked up her cat and brought it back to the store. They sold her the cat food. The next day, she tried to buy two cans of dog food.<\/p>\n

Again, the cashier said, “I’m sorry, but we cannot sell you dog food without proof that you have a dog. A lot of old people buy dog food to eat, but the management wants proof that you are buying the dog food for your dog.”<\/p>\n

So she went home and brought in her dog.<\/p>\n

She then was able to buy the dog food. The next day she brought in a box with a hole in the lid.<\/p>\n

The little old lady asked the cashier to stick her finger in the hole.<\/p>\n

The cashier balked, “No, you might have a snake in there.”<\/p>\n

The little old lady assured her that there was nothing in the box that would harm her.<\/p>\n

So the cashier put her finger into the box and quickly pulled it out. She said to the little old lady, “That smells like shit.”<\/p>\n

The little old lady said, “It is. I want to buy a roll of toilet paper.”<\/p>\n

A wonderful short Italian video. Oops<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n