Josh recently met up with Scott Redler at the New York Stock Exchange to discuss moving averages, and trading vs investing. Scott is the Chief Strategic Officer at T3 Live.
When will there be a coronavirus vaccine? 5 questions answered
by Pharmboy - January 28th, 2020 9:21 pm
Reminder: We are available to chat with Members, comments are found below each post.
When will there be a coronavirus vaccine? 5 questions answered
A security guard wears a mask as she keeps watch at arriving passengers at Manila’s international airport in the Philippines on Jan. 23, 2020, as part of efforts to contain the coronavirus. Aaron Favila/AP Photo
Courtesy of Aubree Gordon, University of Michigan and Florian Krammer, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
Editor’s note: The coronavirus that started in Wuhan has sickened more than 4,000 people and killed at least 100 in China as of Jan. 27, 2020. Thailand and Hong Kong each have reported eight confirmed cases, and five people in the U.S. have been diagnosed with the illness. People are hoping for a vaccine to slow the spread of the disease.
Is there a vaccine under development for the coronavirus?
Work has begun at multiple organizations, including the National Institutes of Health, to develop a vaccine for this new strain of coronavirus, known among scientists as 2019-nCoV.
Scientists are just getting started working, but their vaccine development strategy will benefit both from work that has been done on closely related viruses, such as SARS and MERS, as well as advances that have been made in vaccine technologies, such as nucleic acid vaccines, which are DNA- and RNA-based vaccines that produce the vaccine antigen in your own body.
Was work underway on this particular strain?
No, but work was ongoing for other closely related coronaviruses that have caused severe disease in humans, namely MERS and SARS. Scientists had not been concerned about this particular strain, as we did not know that it existed and could cause disease in humans until it started causing this outbreak.
How do scientists know when to work on a vaccine for a coronavirus?
Work on vaccines for severe coronaviruses has historically begun once the viruses start infecting humans.
Given that this is the third major outbreak of a new coronavirus that we have had in the past two decades and also…
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A secret reason Rx drugs cost so much: A global web of patent laws protects Big Pharma
by ilene - January 28th, 2020 8:26 pm
A secret reason Rx drugs cost so much: A global web of patent laws protects Big Pharma
Advocates for lower drug prices held a vigil on Sept. 5, 2019 outside of Eli Lilly in New York City, honoring those who have lost their lives due to the high cost of insulin. Eric McGregor/LightRocket via Getty Images
Courtesy of Faisal Chaudhry, University of Dayton
The high price of insulin, which has reached as much as US$450 per month, has raised outrage across the country. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has called it a national embarrassment, wondering why U.S. residents should have to drive to Canada to buy cheaper insulin.
As a legal scholar who focuses on the contradictory role of property rights on economic well-being, including through the role of intellectual property rights, my research makes it clear that drug pricing is far more complicated than any candidate on the debate stage has time to explain.
To fully understand these complexities requires looking at a web of international patent law and trade agreements.
Insulin was discovered almost 100 years ago, saving the lives of many people with diabetes. Its soaring costs in recent years has brought outcries from patients and politicians. John Fredricks/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Why no generic insulin?
Scientists working in Canada’s public sector discovered insulin nearly a century ago. The first techniques for synthesizing the compound, which should have more readily allowed for the production of generic versions, emerged some four decades ago. Yet today insulin remains unavailable in any significant generic version.
One of the three companies that control 90% of the world insulin market, Eli Lilly, recently did bow to public pressure by announcing a forthcoming “authorized generic” version called Lispro. But that could still run some people $140 per prescription.
U.S. consumers are not alone in facing high prices of insulin and other life-saving drugs. For the last two decades, intense controversy has raged around multinational pharmaceutical giants being able to monopolize access to vital medicines the world over.…
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What Long Term Investors Can Learn From Traders
by ilene - January 28th, 2020 7:22 pm
What Long Term Investors Can Learn From Traders
Courtesy of Joshua M Brown
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After the trial’s over, President Trump’s impeachment battles could determine who holds real power in the US government
by ilene - January 28th, 2020 6:43 pm
After the trial's over, President Trump's impeachment battles could determine who holds real power in the US government
Cases related to the Trump impeachment may end up at the Supreme Court. ZACH GIBSON/AFP via Getty Images
Courtesy of Barbara L. McQuade, University of Michigan
The legal and constitutional battles sparked by President Trump’s behavior could affect how the U.S. government works for generations, long after the impeachment trial is over.
After the last Senate staffer turns out the lights, major questions remain to be decided outside of the Capitol about the limits of presidential power, the willingness of courts to decide political questions and the ability of Congress to exercise effective oversight and hold a president accountable.
Here are three of those questions.
What are the limits of presidential power?
First, the aggressive exercise of executive power by Trump has put this power under court scrutiny.
Trump’s vow to “fight all the subpoenas” breaks from the traditional process – negotiation and accommodation – that previous presidents have used to resolve disputes between branches of the government.
President Trump in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on Jan. 9, 2020. Drew Angerer/Getty Images
As a result, several cases are currently pending, including a legal challenge brought by the House Judiciary Committee to compel the testimony of Don McGahn, Trump’s former White House counsel. The House had sought McGahn’s testimony about Trump’s alleged obstruction of justice in the investigation of special counsel Robert Mueller into Russian election interference.
McGahn challenged the subpoena issued by the Judiciary Committee on the grounds of absolute immunity, arguing that he – a close aide to the president, and a member of the co-equal executive branch – need not appear before Congress to answer questions at all.
U.S. District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson rejected this argument, saying that while McGahn could possibly assert executive privilege about individual questions, he could not refuse to appear altogether.
Executive privilege is not specified in the Constitution. But the Supreme Court…
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Citizens United: The Court Ruling That Sold Our Democracy
by ilene - January 28th, 2020 2:18 pm
Citizens United: The Court Ruling That Sold Our Democracy
Ten years after Citizens United, the damage is broad and deep—but we can still fix it.
With so many politicians in the pockets of their big donors, it’s been even harder to make progress on issues like gun safety, health care costs, or climate change. (Photo: DonkeyHotey/Flickr)
Ten years ago, in January 2010, the Supreme Court released its disastrous Citizens United decision. The court, either through remarkable naivety or sheer malevolence, essentially married the terrible idea that “money is speech” to the terrible idea that “corporations are people.”
The ruling put a for sale sign on our democracy, opening up a flood of corporate, special interest, and even foreign money into our politics.
Through Citizens United and related decisions, the Court made a bad situation worse. We saw the proliferation of super PACs, which can accept and spend unlimited amounts of money to influence elections, and the rise of dark money, which is undisclosed political spending that can come from any special interest, including foreign countries.
One-fifth of all super PAC donations in the past 10 years have come from just 11 people.
In the 10 years since the decision, there’s been $4.5 billion in political spending by outside interest groups, compared to $750 million spent in the 20 years prior to the case.
From 2000-2008, there were only 15 federal races where outside spending exceeded candidate spending. In the same amount of time following Citizens United, this occurred in 126 races. Now, almost half of all outside spending is dark money that has no or limited disclosure of its donors.
That money isn’t coming from the farmers suffering through Donald Trump’s trade war or the fast-food workers fighting for a living wage. It’s coming from the wealthiest donors, people often with very different
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“Smart Money”? – Hollywood Celebs And Sports Icons Got Crushed In Mattress-Maker Casper
by Zero Hedge - January 28th, 2020 10:35 am
Courtesy of ZeroHedge
"Smart money" investors, such as some Hollywood actors and sports icons, are linked up with top VC firms and investment banks, have been stung by the VC bubble of overinflated unicorns that see a valuation collapse right before IPO.
Think WeWork, and what happened to the office-sharing space company last fall, it's valuation plunged as it attempted to IPO. The company then ran out of money and was bailed out by its largest shareholder, SoftBank.
Leonardo DiCaprio and rapper 50 Cent have been the latest "smart money" investors to feel the pain of plunging valuations, after their investments in Casper Sleep Inc., an online mattress retailer, saw valuations fall as it attempts to IPO.
Reuters notes that the unicorn mattress company will issue 9.6 million shares between the $17 to $19 level, which is at the top part of the range, giving the company $182.4 million in IPO proceeds. Such a level would also give the company a $768 million valuation, or about a -23% drop in book value from its latest funding round.
In 1Q19, the money-losing company was valued at $1.1 billion, which is a -30% decline in today's valuation versus what was seen early last year.
We noted since WeWork imploded last fall, investors' risk appetite for money-losing companies has collapsed. This has also marked the top of not just the VC bubble, but also the IPO bubble.
"Valuations in the private market are currently under the microscope, especially with unicorns, as they attempt to tap the public markets," said Jeff Zell, a senior research analyst at IPO Boutique.
"The biggest hurdle that Casper Sleep is going to have during the roadshow process is proving to investors a viable path to profitability while competing in a highly competitive industry," Zell said.
Even "smart money" in Hollywood is feeling the pressure as the bubble of everything deflates.
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Citibank, Which Foreclosed on Homes Under an Alias, Illegally Held Homes Off the Market for More than Five Years Says Regulator
by ilene - January 28th, 2020 10:15 am
Courtesy of Pam Martens
Michael Corbat, CEO of Citigroup Since 2012
On October 11 of last year, in a bland press release that drew little mainstream media attention, the Federal regulator of national banks, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, announced that Citibank had agreed to pay a $30 million fine over charges that it held homes on which it had foreclosed off the market for more than the statutory holding period of five years. Citibank is the federally-insured, deposit-taking bank that is part of the serially-miscreant Wall Street mega bank, Citigroup.
The action comes at a time when rents are rising dramatically across the U.S. as a result of a shortage of affordable homes to purchase.
What is extremely troublesome about the OCC’s action, and which continues a trend among federal bank regulators in the Trump administration, is just how little the regulators are willing to share with the American people in terms of facts about the continuing illegal conduct of these mega Wall Street banks. That obfuscation comes simultaneously with the Trump administration’s efforts to further deregulate these serially-charged behemoths.
The OCC Consent Order in this case says only that it involved “over 200 violations alone between April 4, 2017 and August 14, 2019.” But Citigroup/Citibank foreclosed on thousands of homes during and after the financial crash in 2008, often using an alias of Liquidation Properties, Inc., which it hid its connections to. The OCC Consent Order suggests that the bank only held hundreds of homes illegally off the market. But if the OCC had gone back further in time, would the number be in the thousands? And just how long were the homes kept off the market after Citibank foreclosed? Was it six years or ten years or 15 years? The OCC is silent on these critical points.
We broke the story in 2009 about how Citigroup/Citibank was conducting its foreclosures during the financial crisis under the alias of Liquidation Properties, Inc. (LPI). While LPI had made filings in U.S. District Courts and with Secretaries of State attesting that it was not a “party, a parent, a subsidiary or other affiliate of a publicly owned corporation,” Citigroup’s December 31,…
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Coronavirus outbreak: WHO’s decision to not declare a global public health emergency explained
by ilene - January 28th, 2020 2:39 am
Coronavirus outbreak: WHO's decision to not declare a global public health emergency explained
Masks are selling out in Singapore amid concerns about the Wuhan virus. Ng Sor Luan/EPA
Courtesy of Tom Solomon, University of Liverpool
The World Health Organization’s decision to not declare the novel coronavirus outbreak in China a public health emergency of international concern, or PHEIC, will surprise many. The number of reported cases and deaths is doubling every couple of days, and patients have now been reported from many Asian countries, as well as the Middle East, Europe, Australia and the US.
You might wonder how bad things have to get before this is deemed to be a global public health emergency. But such declarations by the WHO are not taken lightly, as Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the World Health Organization (WHO) explained in the press conference.
The concept of the WHO declaring global public health emergencies first arose after the 2003 Sars coronavirus outbreak. As with the current outbreak, it started in a live animal market where the spread of infected excrement to humans allowed the virus to cross the species barrier. But unlike the current situation, the Sars epidemic was growing for many months in China before authorities admitted they had a problem. By the time the Sars outbreak was brought under control, there were over 8,000 cases and 700 deaths in 37 countries.
The WHO decided that declaring a PHEIC, introduced as part of the 2005 International Health Regulations, would help manage these situations.
Previously, under legislation that was 150 years old, cholera, plague and yellow fever were contained by quarantine and embargoes at a country’s borders. The 2005 legal framework focuses on containing an outbreak at its source, with an emphasis on preparedness. It requires countries to maintain necessary “core capacities”, such as the ability to diagnose infections and isolate infected patients. And rather than only being able to report specific known diseases, they can report unusual public health patterns, for example an unexpected increase in patients with severe respiratory symptoms.
A PHEIC is declared when there is “an extraordinary event which is determined … to constitute a…
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Animal Spirits: Short Squeeze
by ilene - January 27th, 2020 9:15 pm
Animal Spirits: Short Squeeze
Courtesy of Michael Batnick
(This article was originally posted on 1-22-20.)
Today’s Animal Spirits is brought to you by YCharts. Mention Animal Spirits to receive 20% off (*New YCharts users only)
Listen here:
On today’s show we discuss:
- Can financial literacy be improved?
- Has the 401(k) passed its expiration date?
- The new American retirement plan
- Almost 90% of Americans over age 65 receive Social Security benefits.
- Pay Is Rising Fastest for Low Earners
- Are yawns contagious? Yes
- The Fed is causing a bubble in everything
- Central banks are driving up risk taking
- Stocks are going nowhere, fast
- Long-term return expectations
- Credit cards of the future
- BlackRock going in on ESG
- Startups everywhere?
- What should yo work on?
- An NBA player is on the Blockchain
- Should I buy a house?
Charts:
Recommendations:
Tweets:
I read it but don’t find it persuasive. 6-9 months ago there was widespread talk of an impending recession, triggered in part by yield curve inversion. /1 https://t.co/4Dz7LBkw3Q
— Neel Kashkari (@neelkashkari) January 17, 2020
The 10 most trusted brands in America, according to new poll by @MorningConsult pic.twitter.com/Jtw89Hni9t
— Darren Rovell (@darrenrovell) January 13, 2020
Don’t know who put this together. But I think it’s a great reminder of the burning need for creativity and differentiation. #marketing #design pic.twitter.com/dn8ySGHU24
— Fer Machado (@fer_machado123) January 15, 2020
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How CEOs, experts and philosophers see the world’s biggest risks differently
by ilene - January 27th, 2020 8:23 pm
How CEOs, experts and philosophers see the world's biggest risks differently
Activist Greta Thunberg was among attendees who want the world’s leaders to prioritize fighting climate change. AP Photo/Michael Probst
Courtesy of Christopher Michaelson, University of St. Thomas
We live in a world threatened by numerous existential risks that no country or organization can resolve alone, such as climate change, extreme weather and the coronavirus.
But in order to adequately address them, we need agreement on which are priorities – and which aren’t.
As it happens, the policymakers and business leaders who largely determine which risks become global priorities spent a week in January mingling in the mountainous resort of Davos for an annual meeting of the world’s elite.
I participated in a global risk assessment survey that informed those at the Davos summit on what they should be paying the most attention to. The results, drawn from experts in a broad range of disciplines including business, happen to be very different from what company CEOs specifically see as the biggest threats they face.
As a philosopher, I found the differences curious. They highlight two contrasting ways of seeing the world – with significant consequences for our ability to address societal risks.
Wildfires in Australia have destroyed more than 3,000 homes and razed more than 10.6 million hectares since September. AP Photo/Noah Berger
Two perspectives on the biggest risks
The World Economic Forum’s Global Risk Report consolidates the perceptions of about 800 experts in business, government and civil society to rank “the world’s most pressing challenges” for the coming year by likelihood and impact.
In 2020, extreme weather, a failure to act on climate change and natural disasters topped the list of risks in terms of likelihood of occurrence. In terms of impact, the top three were climate action failure, weapons of mass destruction and a loss of biodiversity.
The specific perspective of corporate leaders, however, is captured in another survey that highlights what they perceive as the biggest risks to their…
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW. She manages the site