COVID-19 Modeling Update

As I have posted for weeks, my baseline model is that the US will follow Italy’s model. We are still a long way from being to reopen based on the current criteria of governors.

As you can see through yesterday, the comparison matches.

We are running about two weeks behind Italy when it comes to the peak. Presuming we follow Italy’s path, we will still be at a high level of cases in two weeks.

Another example if if we compare to the EU overall. If you think about Italy as say a NY and the rest of the countries as States, that could be a good comparison. If we match peaks, here is the EU. (France had a weird day so I cut that off.)

We are about 9 days behind the EU. Please note that big drop at the end looks impressive, but that gets them to 61% of cases at peak, 18 days after it happened. Italy only took 9 days to have that same drop and of course Italy is still at 61% of cases.

Bitcoin is NOT an Investment

Bitcoin has staged a huge rally this year. I’ve discussed a few times how Bitcoin does NOT meet ANY of the three criteria for a currency. (And I’m still waiting for someone to tell me something I need Bitcoin for… that is legal.)

There is no fundamental reason for the rally. In fact, it’s clear at this point that Bitcoin is not an investment, but just a trading tool – a true casino game.

In the figure below, I graph the percentage of all Bitcoins that trade each day (light blue light, left axis). Currently 20% of all Bitcoins trade EVERY DAY. In other words, the average Bitcoin is held…. 1 week. This transformation to a pure speculative game has occurred during the price rise this year (dark blue, right axis.)

As a comparison, I also chart the percentage of shares outstanding that trade each day for 5 popular stocks. As you can see, these stocks trade orders of magnitude lower than Bitcoin. In fact, the average share of Coke is held 1 year.

Bottom line: If you want to gamble, buy Bitcoin. If you want to invest, look elsewhere.