Move along folks, nothing to see here.
The new, more contageous strain of corona is in the US and McConnel killed the additional stimulus but why should that bother the markets? The good news is, with most of the country back on lockdown, we "only" had 201,106 new cases yesterday and "only" 3,628 Americans died yesterday – which was 9% better than Monday so YAY!!!, I guess….
Here's a fun fact, there are only 924,107 "staffed" hospital beds in the US – ones where the patient can be monitored. Only 20% of them have the potential to have ventilators – even after US having 9 months to get ready. 124,686 Americans were hospitalized YESTERDAY – most of them cycle out within a day or two but every time one lingers on, it diminishes our total capacity to care for the rest.
The US ranks 32nd in hospital beds per capita, right behind Turkey but better than Columbia so YAY!!! again, I guess. Remember what China did when Covid started – they built two giant hospitals just for Covid cases on just a few weeks and that country only had 90,000 cases – TOTAL. The US will ring in the New Year with 20M cases and not one wing has been added to any hospital – no Government effort at all has been made to make sure we are prepared, leaving us no choice but to go back on lockdown.
It's one thing for the Government to say they don't want to have lockdowns because they hurt the economy but when the same Government does nothing to make it possible to NOT have lockdowns – what do they think is going to happen? You can't govern this ineptly by accident – it has to be the plan….
California, Ohio, North Carolina and Puerto Rico now have "stay at home" orders in place – no going out unless it's absolutely necessary as their hosptial systems can't take any more patients. PA, MA, DE, WS, KY and NM have all issued stay at home advisorys – trying to not make it an order if they don't have to.
What could possibly be better for the stock market, right? Maybe we'll get lucky in 2021 and get hit by an asteroid or something – then we'd see Dow 40,000 for sure – because that's the way the markets work now, apparently….
The Russell 2000 Small Cap Index (/RTY) has been rejected at the 20,000 mark so perhaps the fact that 25% of small businesses have closed down and another 1/3 of the ones that are left don't know if they will make it through the first quarter MIGHT be leading investors to hesitate slightly before paying record-high prices for the small caps but doesn't look like it's any reason not to give Tesla (TSLA) $666/share at a $631Bn valuation as a reward for making $2Bn this year – only 315 times earnings.
Chipotle (CMG) is still going strong at $1,400 and we're aiming for $1,100 at the end of next year as well as $1,300 or lower by Jan 15th – only two weeks away. The net cost of our CMG spread in the Short-Term Portfolio (STP) is $42,722 and, if CMG is below $1,100 by next January, the spread will pay $180,000 for a potential profit of $137,278 (321%) – that's a nice hedge as it's doubtful CMG will not sell off with the market and it's also doubful CMG will get through 4 earnings reports justifying it's current $39Bn valuation when this year they will be lucky to make $300M so that's 130 times earnings for a fast-food franchise?
| CMG Short Put | 2022 21-JAN 1,100.00 PUT [CMG @ $1,393.97 $1.76] | -3 | 10/28/2020 | (387) | $-39,525 | $131.75 | $-48.60 | $-7.75 | $83.15 | – | $14,580 | 36.9% | $-24,945 | ||
| CMG Short Call | 2021 15-JAN 1,300.00 CALL [CMG @ $1,393.97 $1.76] | -5 | 10/28/2020 | (16) | $-41,550 | $83.10 | $18.00 | $101.10 | $-2.00 | $-9,000 | -21.7% | $-50,550 | |||
| CMG Long Put | 2022 21-JAN 1,400.00 PUT [CMG @ $1,393.97 $1.76] | 6 | 12/17/2020 | (387) | $124,542 | $207.57 | $-7.77 | $199.80 | – | $-4,662 | -3.7% | $119,880 | |||
| CMG Short Put | 2021 15-JAN 1,250.00 PUT [CMG @ $1,393.97 $1.76] | -5 | 12/21/2020 | (16) | $-4,750 | $9.50 | $-6.18 | $3.33 | $-1.48 | $3,088 | 65.0% | $-1,663 |
You CAN be sensible and still make money in this market – it just takes longer…
