Good Monday morning. President Trump was in Newport Beach raising some California cash this weekend — and Orange County Democrats, always ready to exploit an opportunity, were raising money too, $150 million in the last month. And congratulations to the Los Angeles Dodgers, who are heading to their third World Series appearance in four years after clawing back from a 3-1 NLCS hole and defeating the Braves last night.
There have been plenty of Pandemic firsts these seven months
of organized isolation.
1). I have not worn a pair of pants since the first week of
March.
2). Naturally, no socks worn at all in 2020.
3). This writer has lost fifty-five pounds, I have no pants
that fit.
4). I have only driven 425 miles on Big Red in these seven
months. Big Red is my 1997 Mercury Grand Marquis, aka The Dragnet car.
5). And I now really know the neighborhood.
When you are home all day fighting the Zoom battles and staring
out the window you see many interesting events of the neighborhood.
The many people who walk their dogs AND cats the same time
daily. The gentlemen who goes for 6:00 am daily bike ride, but he never smiles.
In fact, many of my neighbors do not smile.
The family across the street who you never see, seriously, two
boys and their parents, you see the Mom and Dad on the rare occasion but never
see the kids. Creepy.
Plenty of Claremont College people in my neighborhood, they
don’t smile either. The mail delivery never at the same time and with different
postman/woman during the week. The constant Uber food, Amazon, UPS, Fed
Express, Lyft, Pizza, deliveries during the day. Since this pandemic began, I
have purchased stock in most of these companies, and I am doing well. I call it
the “Hood” Portfolio.
I have a new member of my family, Bader. One of the nice
pandemic firsts.
I have played 42 rounds of golf in these seven months, all
teed off before 6:30 am. One of the positives about Zooming from home. My
handicap index in fact has gone up, but I do not care, love the game.
We have a neighborhood cat, Burbey, he patrols the entire neighborhood
and runs the show. His brother Brando did the same thing, but the coyotes got
him about a year ago. A sad day. Burbey is cool.
I know the day the landscape boys are here, the street
sweeping day, the twice a week garbage pickup, once a month the “inspector” proceeds
to tour around the neighborhood looking for those who are breaking the
homeowners association rules. I am a regular troublemaker.
Quite the pandemic in the neighborhood.
FALL CALENDAR:
10.31 ………………Halloween
11.1 …………………Day of the Dead
11.1 …………………Set your clocks back
11.3 …………………Take your country back
Now there’s a new Sweden to study: American college campuses.
Watching thousands of students gather in classes, in dorms, and in social
settings is providing another laboratory for epidemiologists.
Here is what they’re learning:
Herd immunity won’t save us anytime soon. More than 88,000
people have been infected across about 1,200 college campuses. That’s a
fraction of the country’s total student population of 20 million. About 60
people have died, mostly college employees.
Experts believe that herd immunity will kick in when about 70
percent of the population is infected — assuming an initial infection provides
lasting immunity, which scientists still aren’t sure about.
“It is almost impossible to imagine a college campus will get
to herd immunity,” said Howard Forman, a health policy professor at the Yale
School of Management, who is leading a team that rates college Covid
dashboards.
Asymptomatic exposure is a real problem. College students are
carrying Covid without symptoms and then spreading it to the general
population, who are then getting sick at much higher rates than the students
are.
“When I talk to a lot of colleges and universities, the
biggest concern is fear of downstream health in the general population,” said
Ramesh Raskar, an associate professor at MIT Media Lab, which has been
developing contact tracing apps and other technology to contain Covid. “We
always suspected asymptomatic transfers but now see they are real. It is
frightening.”
Social distancing has been more clearly defined. There’s still
been a lack of clarity about what counts as close physical contact. Colleges
are showing how the calculation is more involved than just remaining six feet
apart and staying outdoors.
“Before colleges opened, close contact meant going to a barber
or people in a meat factory together or going to a senior care center,” Raskar
said. “Now it’s more complex.” Cases are spreading at outdoor events if people
spend prolonged periods in proximity, without masks. NYU suspended 20 students
for throwing a party in Washington Square Park.
Telling people what to do isn’t enough . Trying to force
students to follow rules by issuing strict guidelines and handing out
punishments isn’t keeping them from spreading Covid. Education, awareness and
clear public health messaging about the importance of wearing masks, downstream
risks to vulnerable populations and the contagiousness of the disease has
proven to be far more effective at containing Covid, Raskar said.
The campuses that are doing well are in areas without much
community spread, Forman said. They also have the money to conduct widespread
testing and have students who are highly compliant with guidelines. Just a
handful of non-compliant students threaten an entire college reopening plan.
The University of Illinois had a comprehensive Covid plan and even accounted
for parties, but a dozen students who failed to isolate after testing positive
for Covid sparked an outbreak.
TECH TROUBLES - Tech stumbling blocks
continue to bedevil remote learning:
1. The needs of IT departments and students can be at odds: A
university's chief information officer or a school's IT administrator judge
software on how secure it is, while students and parents just want a simple
interface.
Ed tech has become a tough area for startups and capital
investment because risk-averse school tech administrators tend to stick with
software they're already using.
2. Existing tech can't just be grafted onto remote learning:
That means Zoom or Slack or Microsoft Teams, which have been
vital for keeping offices going during the pandemic, may be ill-suited for
young students, who may struggle with usability.
3. The digital divide looms over everything: Low-income
students have less access to devices and the internet itself. This has been a
concern since early in the pandemic, but there's little evidence it's improving
in any real way.
A survey last month found that 75% of Black and Latino
families with children in under-resourced schools in L.A. don't use computers
regularly.
47% of parents surveyed had never visited the ed tech
platforms used by their kids' schools.
COLLEGE CHRONICLES - Occidental
College will discontinue its D-III football program after three years of
deliberations. College President Harry Elam: "Only after very careful
consideration and a thorough review of past planning efforts, as well as with
the deepest regard for the context and history of football at Occidental, do we
make this decision. ... We want to offer the best possible experience for our
student-athletes, and the College has determined that to do so for football
would require a level of investment that is not sustainable, especially
relative to other priorities and following the impact of the pandemic."
Elam also noted that the competitive gap between Oxy and other SCIAC programs
remains. "We are often at a disadvantage competing against teams that draw
upon larger pools of prospective student-athletes, or in some cases, have
larger endowments and greater resources on which they can draw. As a result,
despite the best efforts of our dedicated coaching staff, we have found it
increasingly difficult to consistently recruit at the level we would need to be
competitive."
A sad day for the SCIAC conference, who is next?
MARKET WEEK –
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*As of market close
Markets: Just a reminder that today we publish year-to-date
markets info rather than the day-to-day changes. So the prices and gains/losses
you’re seeing above reflect how the S&P, Dow, etc. are performing since
Jan. 1 2020.
Energy: OPEC and allies will meet today to chat about an oil
market that’s in the dumps. To keep prices from collapsing, producers
drastically cut output in the spring when the coronavirus gutted demand for
fuel.
BIRTHDAYS
THIS WEEK – Birthday wishes and thoughts this week to Judge Judy Sheindlin
(80), Kim Kardashian (40), Bobby Knight (80), John Lithgow (75), Willie O’Ree
(85), Bill Wyman (84).
DRIVING THE WEEK — Biggest
event comes Thursday night in Nashville, Tenn. with the final debate between
Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden. Trump needs a game changer. Biden needs
to just be OK … Fed Chair Jerome Powell speaks Monday morning at 8:00 a.m. at
the virtual IMF/World Bank meeting on crypto currencies and cross-border
payments …
Commercial real estate is in
trouble, and turbulence in the $15 trillion market is threatening to bleed over
into the broader financial system just as the U.S. struggles to emerge from a
recession.
The longer the pandemic
paralyzes hotels, retailers and office buildings, the more difficult it is for
property owners to meet their mortgage payments — raising the specter of
widespread downgrades, defaults and eventual foreclosures. As companies like
J.C. Penney, Neiman Marcus and Pier 1 file for bankruptcy, retail properties
are losing major tenants with no clear plan to replace them, while hotels are
running below 50 percent occupancy.
WEEKEND NOTABLE QUOTES -
“I can’t believe how fast the
second wave has hit...another recession is absolutely possible.”—Katharina
Utermöhl, a senior economist at Allianz, warned the FT of further economic pain
as Covid-19 cases continue to rise across Europe.
“Additional differences...must
be addressed in a comprehensive manner in the next 48 hours.”—A top aide to
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced a two-day deadline for any stimulus
agreement before the election (the deadline is today).
“Maybe I’ll have to leave the
country.”—President Trump pondered his future plans if he lost to Joe Biden
during a campaign rally in Georgia.
"Elections aren't always
great at bringing people together."—New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda
Ardern stated the obvious after her Labour Party dominated the country’s
general election. Arden has earned international praise for her handling of the
coronavirus.
“Have you seen Nurse
Ratched?”—Your coworker trying to make small talk this morning. Netflix tweeted
that 48 million people have watched the show in the first 28 days of its
release, making it Netflix’s most popular original Season 1 of the year.
FALL CLASSIC - After being
pushed to the limit in the league championship series, the top seed in each
league has advanced to the World Series, which will be played at a neutral site
for the first time since 1944.
The Dodgers are back in the
World Series for the third time in the past five years, determined to do what
they couldn't do the last two times: end a 32-year championship drought.
The Rays are back in the World
Series for the first time since 2008, which was the franchise's 11th year in
existence. They're one of six teams without a title (Rockies, Mariners,
Brewers, Padres, Rangers).
The Dodgers paid nearly as much
in signing bonuses this season ($25.3 million) as the Rays paid in payroll.
Dodgers 2020 payroll: $107.9
million (2nd in MLB)
Rays 2020 payroll: $28.3
million (28th in MLB)
SWAMI’S
WEEK TOP PICKS –
NFL Football Pick of the Week –
Sunday 10/25, 5:20 PM (PT), NBC: Tamp Bay Buccaneers (4--) vs. Las Vegas
Raiders (3-2). Brady in Vegas, it will not be pleasant, The Raiders win 27 –
24. (Season to Date 4-0)
College Football Pick of the Week –
Saturday 10/24, 4:30 PM (PT), ABC: The Big Ten (14) begin their season, #18
Michigan Wolverines (0-0) vs. #21 Minnesota Gophers (0-0). Who knows, family
genes tell me Michigan wins 32 – 28. (Season to Date 2-4)
MLB Pick of the Week – Saturday 10/24, 5:08 PM (PT) Fox: It is still the October Classic, Los Angeles
Dodgers vs. Tampa Bay Rays in Game 4 of the World Series. We like the Dodger to
win the series, they take game 4, 6 – 4. (Season to Date (3-2)
2020
Season to Date (23 - 17)
ON THIS DATE - Today marks the anniversary of one of the most infamous days in Wall Street history. On October 19, 1987, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 22.6%, the biggest single-session drop in history. It’s called...drumroll please...Black Monday.
What happened?
The Dow gained 44% in seven months by late August,
stoking fears of a bubble.
Then, a “perfect storm” of conditions, including a
falling dollar and the recent introduction of computerized trading, accelerated
a global selloff.
On Black Monday, risk arbitrage traders, individual
investors, and portfolio insurance holders sold stocks like Girl Scout cookies.
Unlike other financial crises, Black Monday didn’t
trigger a recession or a banking collapse. The Dow clawed back 57% of Black
Monday losses in two sessions. And by September 1989, stocks were at pre-Black
Monday levels.
The legacy of Black Monday: Among other market
reforms, the U.S. installed circuit breakers that pause trading if stocks fall
too much too quickly. If you remember this past March, those circuit breakers
were triggered three times in just over a week when the market plummeted at the
onset of the pandemic.
Next Blog: Trick or
Treat
Until
Monday October 26, 2020 Adios.
Claremont,
California
October
19, 2020
#XI-13-419
2,453 words, eight-minute read
CARTOON OF THE WEEKEND – I Voted
RINK RATS POLL – Dodgers or Rays?
___ Dodgers
___ Rays
___ Who????
QUOTE OF THE MONTH – " There
are two kinds of men in the world ----- those who have a crush on Linda
Ronstadt and those who have never heard of her.” ----- Willie Nelson
Rink Rats is a blog
of weekly observations, predictions and commentary. We welcome your comments
and questions. Also participate in our monthly poll. Rink Rats is now viewed in
Europe, Canada, South America and the United States.
Posted at Rink Rats The Blog: First Published – May 3, 2010
Our Eleventh Year.
www.rhasserinkrats.blogspot.com
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