The fact that England did not bring restrictions in to impact businesses will most likely be the reason for today's blue.
Its always good for all of us who do this comp. to sometimes take a look at the 100 companies that make up the index and remind ourselves how little they represent the sort of businesses who are affected short term by such restrictions. FTSE 250 is much more representative, but even those companies have a business perspective that stretches beyond “England”.
There’s probably a global trader consensus that Omicron may not be all bad news. However pre-Covid it was also very common for the UK indices to drift upwards between Xmas and NY on very thin trading and for no good long-term reason.
Of course I’m just being Mr Grumpy because I can see it slipping out of my grasp 😉 I dont think it will slip back now unless something serious happens like Putin testing if his tanks are all working.
Santa rally has more legs through to the 31st, I reckon. Governments' over-reaction to omicron being unwound. The investment houses did all the calcs on the South Africa data two weeks ago, adjusted for demographics, vaccination rates, etc., and knew where this was going - it was only ever a case of how much damage governments would do in the mean time.
Just runaway inflation to worry about after that but if January earnings come though strongly, even those fears will be tempered.
Obviously it would overall be great for us all if what you have written there turns out to be correct, as regardless of the competition our investments will increas in value and we may finally be on our way out of the Covid nightmare.
But, and I'm sorry to be Eeeyorish about it, I think you might be putting slightly too much faith in the epidemiologistic resources within investment houses . I have heard several actual epidemiologists cautioning about interpreting the findings of these studies too quickly, because they as yet contain insufficient data about the older age-groups' reactions and particularly hospitalisations. It's just too early to obtain such datasets, they caution. So it was quite literally impossible for the investment houses to have accurately factored in that issue; and the key issue for government policy is trying to ensure their health system is not overwhelmed.
You may well still be right that the Santa rally continues, because any more detailed data on older age groups may still not be ready next week. But I was chatting to my Swedish buddy last night and we agreed that the virus is brilliant at making fools of everyone around the world who becomes complacent and disrespects it. Right now that's what the Danes feel (his daughter is CPH based) because having done a superb job on jabbing everyone, they declared the epidemic over in October. Right now their infection rate is still way above the UK, and still rising. They feel like they've made prats of themselves on the world stage (something which never seems to bother our bigger bunch of prats).
I would be very happy to be proven over-pessimistic....
Don't apologies for being Eeyorish, Prague, I like a debate!
The reason I have more faith in the investment houses is that all they are interested in is the best way to make money. There's no political agenda and they are experts at stripping out emotion and focusing on the data.
Their data analysts will be technically a match for anything in government and generally better (source: my step son who runs a large data science team of PHDs in government with a massive attrition rate.). Epidemiological models are published and anyone vaguely competent as a data analyst can understand them and replicate them. The problem has not been technical complexity of models or even volumes of data but the biases of people who then select scenarios to suit their agenda, particularly when they are now committed professionally to certain interpretations. Multiplied by a hysterical press who have watched too many Hollywood zombie movies.
Unfortunately, the mystic megs of epidemiology have proved to be as accurate as weather forecasters and economists.
Their predictions have been woeful and they're finally being called out. Have a look at the Spectator's data graphs and just how poor their predictions have been. Dispute this, only two weeks ago they were threatening 6,000 deaths a day in the UK for Omicron, when India, with 20 times our population, nowhere near our quality of health service and much lower vaccination rates, peaked at 4,500 - and that was for delta! Any statistician worth their salt with those large numbers can adjust for demographics.
One of the reasons people like Ferguson want lockdowns is he can continue to say they work as, with any complex system, it's then (almost) impossible to build a control case. He will argue anyway that people adjusted behaviour - but if that behaviour is based on irrational fear, it's not healthy but destructive process that does more harm than good. They never show the data for the overall impact of lockdowns, yet it's clear that the cost is too high. In my view they shouldn't lock down again until they can show that data, along the lines of an economic model showing that a policy has positive consequences overall.
I don't think there has ever been a virus that naturally becomes more transmissible and more lethal, because it's an inevitable result of evolutionary processes. Spanish flu is amongst us but it no longer kills millions. HIV never turned into an existential threat mostly for the same reason - any virus that kills too quickly doesn't get passed on and the ones that kill more slowly do, etc. over billions and trillions of cycles.
Our intelligence allows us to load the evolutionary dice even further in our favour with vaccines, anti-virals and behavioural responses, so I'm not suggesting we let these things just rip through us. But why assume that Omicron would be at least as bad as Delta and put around that it might even be worse, based on bottom up theories of mutations extrapolated to complex systems, which they should also know, NEVER work. Despite better vaccination rates, better understanding of anti-virals, proof that most people's immune systems could cope with it anyway, etc, etc.. And yet we still need a lock down this year???
It's not just important for the economy but for a whole generation of kids' education and tens if not hundreds of thousands of heart and cancer patients just in this country that will die prematurely over the next couple of years because of the lockdown.
And then there's the moral hazard of people starting to think, there's no point in getting vaccinated because it makes no difference ...
Not to drag this away from savings and investments, but this is ridiculous. You make models in order to avoid them - those numbers have been avoided precisely because people have changed their behaviour due to the modelling. The modelling exists to say "if we don't change our behaviours, this is what it will look like", people see that and thinks "yikes, better put on a mask" - cases then dont reach those heights. If you look into the mathematics of the modelling it's sound, but doesn't account for human behaviour when they see a bad forecast, they naturally prepare for the worst.
If that's all that had happened, that would be great. If the opportunity cost was merely lugging around an umbrella in case it rains, that would also be fine.
Instead, we've shut down economies, education and caused unknown collateral deaths in heart and cancer patients based on extreme scenarios. Consistently taking extreme scenarios, seeing them not materialise and persisting in driving the same response is what is ridiculous.
And of course the models can - and should - take into account human behaviour. Behavioural economics has been used for years to predict market herd instinct as people behave rationally and irrationally to fear.
The fact that England did not bring restrictions in to impact businesses will most likely be the reason for today's blue.
Its always good for all of us who do this comp. to sometimes take a look at the 100 companies that make up the index and remind ourselves how little they represent the sort of businesses who are affected short term by such restrictions. FTSE 250 is much more representative, but even those companies have a business perspective that stretches beyond “England”.
There’s probably a global trader consensus that Omicron may not be all bad news. However pre-Covid it was also very common for the UK indices to drift upwards between Xmas and NY on very thin trading and for no good long-term reason.
Of course I’m just being Mr Grumpy because I can see it slipping out of my grasp 😉 I dont think it will slip back now unless something serious happens like Putin testing if his tanks are all working.
The 250 was up by 1% today, whereas the 100 by around 0.6%.
FTSE100 took a late dip on the eve of our comp. Usually last day trading is very light & generally goes sideways, but another late dip could see us just below 7400 having a chance.
Market down this morning. Undoubtedly being manipulated by @golfaddick and his mates in the city as at the time of writing his prediction is only 3 points off.
The rest of suffering so he can take the plaudits in the most important financial contest of the year! :-)
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Merry Christmas to you all.
A 400 point rise today is anticipated!
Instead, we've shut down economies, education and caused unknown collateral deaths in heart and cancer patients based on extreme scenarios. Consistently taking extreme scenarios, seeing them not materialise and persisting in driving the same response is what is ridiculous.
And of course the models can - and should - take into account human behaviour. Behavioural economics has been used for years to predict market herd instinct as people behave rationally and irrationally to fear.
The rest of suffering so he can take the plaudits in the most important financial contest of the year! :-)
75 mins to go....
An hour to go & its hanging around 7380
Tight finish......
Index is falling again & only a point or 2 away from @StrikerFirmani winning now !!
Index really dropping now.
Looks like it could be @PragueAddick's