Poll of the Day > Back like 2 or 3 months ago did you know anyone who predicted that the

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...covid 19 outbreak would get remotely this bad? either in real life or a tv person?

I knew people who worried about it getting worse than this.

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3 months ago we were talking about the primaries and the Mike Pence Space Force. In retrospect we all swept the Coronavirus under the rug.

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Every lunch time together with the Professor I was working alongside at the time. Although not really the current situation, more the economic fallout after the current situation.

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I work at a grocery store and A few months ago there was a guy stocking up on canned food and whatnot said it was going to get bad

hungrymike posted...

I work at a grocery store and A few months ago there was a guy stocking up on canned food and whatnot said it was going to get bad

I'd venture to guess that he did and said the same thing when the swine flu, avian flu, sars, ebola, etc. got a bunch of news coverage. He just happened to be on the mark this time, and this will just reinforce him doing the same thing with every new similar thing that will pop up.
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AirJordan2345 posted...

...covid 19 outbreak would get remotely this bad? either in real life or a tv person?

For me to believe them that hey fully believed it, they must be rich af right now off options plays.

coworker claims he knew so switched from stocks to bonds back in December, but if he really knew and didnt just hunch hed have played options.

AirJordan2345 posted...

...covid 19 outbreak would get remotely this bad? either in real life or a tv person?

Yes, pretty much the entire scientific community as soon as China started ignoring it

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My wife is Chinese and so she was super freaking out about it when the whole thing started, to the point where she's kind of become numb to it now that it's actually on the same continent.

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Lokarin posted...

Yes, pretty much the entire scientific community as soon as China started ignoring it

I hear this. But really, I wonder arent they rich right now from buying puts if they believed it would get this bad or worse.

blu posted...

I hear this. But really, I wonder arent they rich right now from buying puts if they believed it would get this bad or worse.

I believe you would have made more by shorting the market, since you had theoretically unmlimited funds as you start by selling, as opposed to being limited by your starting funds as to how many puts you could buy. I believe selling naked calls would also have netted you more.
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nope

i thought it was just another media scare like the other diseases

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I've always been pretty dismissive of it even now, if more people practiced proper hygiene or common sense it wouldn't have gotten this bad.

Blaqthourne posted...

I believe you would have made more by shorting the market, since you had theoretically unmlimited funds as you start by selling, as opposed to being limited by your starting funds as to how many puts you could buy. I believe selling naked calls would also have netted you more.

totally dont know these terms since I dont play. Will look into them though.

I don't recall having ever talked about.

Personally I didn't view it any differently than SARS or any of the other diseases to come from China.

blu posted...

totally dont know these terms since I dont play. Will look into them though.

Short Selling

A short sale (shorting the market) basically means that you sell a security that you do not own, and then buy it back at a later time. You do this when you think the market will go down, as you are selling shares at a higher price today and then buying them back at a lower cost. This can be a risky strategy, as in theory, a stock can go up in price indefinitely, which also means your losses can be tremendous if the shares actually do well as you short them.

Writing Naked Calls

When you write a call, you are selling the rights to someone to buy a shares of a stock from you at a specific price within a certain timeframe. Take Verizon (symbol VZ) as an example. It closed at 52.77 on Friday. Now I can write (sell) a call (the right to buy a stock) on VZ at $54. I earn a premium for doing this. The buyer is hoping that the price of VZ goes up a lot, because if rises above $54, they can get it from me at $54 still. So in theory, they can sit in it for a while, and execute the call when its at a higher price (lets say $60), pay me $54 for it, and then turn around and sell it for $60. They just made a profit, so long as the premium they paid isnt too high.

On the other hand, I want that stock price to stay the same or drop, since that means I just earned a premium and didnt need to give up the stock. And if it was a naked call, that means I did this without owning the underlying stock in the first place - I just made money without even having the collateral in place yet. Again, this is a risky strategy because I could be forced to buy shares of the stock at a high price and then sell them to the person who bought the call at the agreed upon price.

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