- Sep 19, 2020
- 23 min read

How will Covid-19/Coronavirus Affect my Alternative Investment Portfolio? Part 30: September 19th

Updated: Feb 8, 2021

U.S. surpasses 200,000 deaths, as progress on second wave ominously grinds to a halt and reverses; World Round-Up; Last week's glimmer of hope fades as Midwest clearly loses control of second wave; Georgia's anemic economic recovery continues; When will the hammering stop? Economy forced to endure more record unemployment; Shocking 60% of business closures since March are now permanent; Financial cliff update: finally some slim hope for a compromise?; Update on my investment strategy.

(Usual disclaimer: I'm just an investor expressing my personal opinion and not a registered financial advisor, attorney or accountant. Consult your own financial professionals before making any financial decisions. Code of Ethics: I / we do not accept any money from any sponsor or platform for anything, including postings, reviews, referring investors, affiliate leads or advertising. Nor do we negotiate special terms for ourselves in the club above what we negotiate for the benefit of members.).

Quick Summary

There was a lot of new economic and health information this week, but it was very light on new information about the virus.

This article is part of a multi-article series that's been published weekly since the pandemic began back in March 2020. It started with three introductory articles on the virus and its effect on the economy and on alternative investment classes. Then it moved on to weekly updates on the latest and greatest developments (along with weekly updates on my evolving personal portfolio strategy). You can see the links to every article in the series here.

U.S. Surpasses 200,000 Deaths, as Progress on Second Wave Ominously Grinds to a Halt and Reverses

For the 26th week in a row, the United States battled the coronavirus called SARS-CoV-2, which causes the Covid-19 disease. This week, the country observed a grim milestone with more than 200,000 people killed. And as of Saturday morning, the death toll had climbed to 203,108 (versus 197,675 last Saturday morning).

In comparison, in early March, pandemic models predicted only 100,000 to 200,000 Americans would die from the virus. And currently, few believe that the deaths will be ending anytime soon.

It was five weeks ago that the U.S. finally turned the corner on the second wave of deaths, and has been battling it lower ever since. How did things go this week?

The labeling makes it difficult to read, so let's zoom in:

This was not a good week. The ominous-looking bump at the end of last week grew into a nasty spike before a small drop at the end of the week. Even after that smaller reprieve, deaths were still higher than they were two weeks ago. So the numbers are progressing in the wrong direction.

And, as has been the case every week so far in the second wave: deaths today remain higher than they were in the trough of the first wave, over a month ago.

If this trend continues, we may even be headed for a third wave. But, the data is noisy, so we'll continue to watch.

Either way: if we're unable to make clear progress and deaths remain high, then the overwhelming consensus of economists is that this would sabotage hopes of a quick, V-shaped recovery. Instead, the recovery would assume a different shape (W-shaped, U-shaped, etc.). This would be slower, involve more long-term damage to health and economy, and potentially cause problems for some or many consumers, businesses and investments. (See part 14 for more information on the possible "recovery shapes" and their ramifications).

Since this is potentially so important, let's take a look at one of the leading indicators of upcoming deaths: virus infections. Virus infections tend to lead deaths by anywhere from 2 to 8 weeks (depending on how long it takes someone to die and how long it takes their particular location to report the information). These case numbers are not completely reliable due to testing labs' difficulties, in many parts of the country, with getting results back on time. But they can still provide a clue of what might lie ahead with deaths.

How do virus infections look, this week?

This is again a disappointing graph, showing infections moving in the wrong direction, increasing. If this continues, then it could also suggest that the U.S. is entering a third wave of infections.

A third wave wouldn't be entirely unexpected. In early September, many health experts warned that if Americans didn't take precautions, Labor Day (September 7th) could easily become a super spreader event and a repeat of Memorial Day.

Back in May, the country had made great progress fighting back the first wave. But in late May, many people let down their guard to celebrate Memorial Day and ignored social distancing and other virus prevention safety measures. A few weeks afterwards, all progress fighting the first wave ground to a halt and the second death wave began.

(See "Forgetting History and Doomed to Repeat It: Will Labor Day Launch the Third Wave, like Memorial Day Kicked Off the Second Wave?" )

So it's disappointing to see that so far, Labor Day is looking like a repeat. Still, the data is noisy and it's still too early to tell for sure. So we'll continue to watch.

World Round Up

How did other countries do this week?

As we discussed in part six, South Korea uses an aggressive mixture of the Three T's of epidemic control (testing, tracing and treatment). And through most of the epidemic, it has been one of the world leaders in both minimizing deaths (one of the lowest per million) and also minimizing economic damage (their economy is now mostly open and growth is projected to barely shrink this year. In comparison, the U.S. still has significant closures and is projected to take a -5.9% hit to GDP).

This week, South Korea looked like this:

South Korea had been fighting a third wave triggered by a surge of 400 infections that were traced back to a church in Seoul.

After shooting up last week, this week they went up and down multiple times but essentially plateaued. And they ended the week lower than at the beginning. So perhaps there is some hope that this might be the end of their third wave. But we will have to wait until next week to tell for sure.

The one big positive is that their death rate is so extraordinarily low that, compared to other countries, this is still a great result (see chart below for comparison to other countries). At the same time, if they completely lose control of the third wave, they won't continue to be stay in the top tier forever. So we'll continue to monitor and see how they do.

Meanwhile, Sweden has opted for a lockdown-lite strategy (see part 8). While they have enacted some lockdown measures (they've shut down grade schools, prohibited gatherings larger than 50, instructed elderly people to stay home and young people to work remotely, enacted social distancing rules at restaurants, etc.), they never went into the full-on lockdown seen in many other countries.

The hope has been that if this worked well, it might provide another workable model for other countries looking to deal with the virus. Here's how they look this week:

After a setback last week, they have again resumed progress and looked very good this week.

Sweden's road to this point has been bumpy. The country enjoys a number of unique advantages in fighting the virus that most countries don't have, including an extremely large number of people who live alone, are young and have no children. Despite this, their death rate has been many times worse than other Scandinavian countries (with similar demographics) as well as worse than other countries in general (who lack these advantages). However, they have hoped that if they continued to push down their death curve, they eventually might be able to make up their deficit.

How did Sweden's cumulative deaths look this week? To see, we need to look at deaths per million. Again: unlike raw deaths, this puts countries of different sizes on an equal playing field. Here's how they did:

So this week, they marked a huge milestone and surpassed the United States. So that was positive news for them.

On the other hand, their numbers are still stratospherically bad at about 580 deaths per million. Compared to its next-door neighbors with similar demographic advantages, it's doing almost 6 times worse than Denmark, almost 10 times worse than Finland and 12 times worse than Norway.

And compared to the best-of-show countries, it's almost 100 times worse than South Korea and almost 2000 times worse than Taiwan.

Many health experts believe we will likely get an effective vaccine/treatment later this year, and perhaps a rollout to wider populations sometime in mid-2021. If so, then there may not be enough time for Sweden to ever catch up. On the other hand, the Swedish model could still prove itself on deaths, if other things happen. It's possible we may not get an effective medicine; and/or the pandemic could mutate, leading it to run wilder than expected in 2021; and/or other countries may stumble while Sweden doesn't (which is what happened with the U.S. and Sweden in the graph above). We'll continue to watch.

The other big issue for Sweden to overcome is that lockdown lite has thus far failed in its main goal: protecting its economy. The country is still expected to plunge into a severe recession (their GDP is projected to be -5.6% in 2020, versus -5.9% for the U.S.). This is a bit better than the average -8.1% projected for the Euro Zone, but is not the large benefit many hoped to see.

But again, if they can sustain their progress against the virus, then their economic outlook could improve as well. For now, it still appears that Sweden has suffered the worst of both worlds (receiving more damage to its economy and its public health than have others). We'll continue to watch.

Meanwhile, in Europe, some health experts had previously warned that the dropping of travel restrictions would cause an additional wave of virus infections and deaths. And so for the last few weeks, we looked at one country in particular that was alarming: Spain. How does that nation look this week?

Unfortunately, this was another bad week for Spain. For the third week in a row, they're showing escalating deaths and so far have not gotten control of their latest death wave.

Last Week's Glimmer of Hope Fades as Midwest Clearly Not in Control of Second Wave

For the last 11 weeks, we've closely watched individual states to get insights on what might happen next at the national level. We saw the second wave of infections (and eventually deaths) start in the Sunbelt and spread across the country. In response, many states put in place virus control measures, including reinstatements of key portions of lockdowns and rules mandating the wearing of masks (in more than 50% of states). And in the last three weeks, we saw Sunbelt states make huge progress in reducing infections and eventually deaths. However, this was accompanied by surges in the Midwest and Northeast, along with warnings that school re-openings might cause additional increases. Then, last week, we saw glimmers of hope that perhaps the Midwest might be making a turnaround (with drops in multiple states near the end of the week in infections and/or deaths).

What happened this week?

Here's West Virginia:

At the end of last week, both infections and deaths in West Virginia had dropped, suggesting perhaps they might be getting on top of their virus problems. Unfortunately, this week, infections climbed to a new high. So they do not appear to have gotten their second wave under control. And deaths, also, climbed sharply and on one day even matched their previous record high.

How about North Dakota?

Last week, North Dakota also had a drop in infections (suggesting perhaps the start of turning things around) and deaths had held steady.

Unfortunately, it turned out to be just a temporary reprieve, as infections this week clearly increased to record highs.

So they still have not gotten control of their second wave, either. Additionally, their deaths also hit record highs.

How about Iowa?

Last week, Iowa had shown a huge drop in infections, and deaths had dropped a little, too.

But this week, infections started surging again.

Also, based on the shape of the data, it's looking possible that what earlier appeared to be a huge drop wasn't real, but was, instead, a statistical aberration. Previously, the state was not properly recording antigen tests, so last week, they finally added them to the official statistics. Looking at that data now, it appears that Iowa then committed another error: they did not properly backdate the results of the antigen tests. Instead, it appears they simply threw them on top of the other existing infections (unhelpfully mixing the dates).

If that's accurate, then the "hump" in the middle is very exaggerated and inaccurate. And if so, then Iowa may never really have peaked and come down, but is rather continuing in its second, still-increasing wave.

Either way, this was not a great week for Iowa, with infections rising.

On the other hand, Iowa's deaths did decrease a little bit, so that was encouraging to see. We'll continue to watch them.

How about Kansas?

Like other Midwest states, Kansas had previously had a drop in both infections and deaths at the end of last week.

But, this week, that trend reversed with infections increasing. So, they do not appear to have turned things around at this point, either. Additionally, deaths surged to a record high.

We'll see how these evolve, next week.

Georgia's Anemic Economic Recovery Continues

One of the most important questions for investments (as well as for the health of the country) is "what will the shape and speed of the recovery be?" If it's V-shaped and quick, then many investments will be just fine. On the other hand, if it's one of the other shapes (U-shaped, swoosh, etc.), then some or many investments could run into problems. (See part 14 for more information on the possible "recovery shapes" and their ramifications).

To monitor the evolving situation, we've been watching Georgia very closely. It was one of the first states to reopen. So we expected this to make it a useful early indicator of what could be in store for some other parts of the nation.

Back on April 24, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp reopened nail salons, hairdressers, bowling alleys and gyms (as long as they followed state protocols). Then, three days later, restaurants and theaters were allowed to reopen. So they've effectively been open for over four months.

How are they doing? Since there's no official government or state data on this, we've previously looked at Placer.ai. This is a service which tracks mobile phone usage to different types of businesses to measure foot traffic. And we will look at Georgia's four primary Covid-19 sensitive industries: restaurants, retail, fitness, and hotels.

So this week, in the category of restaurants, let's take a look at Wendy's. This is a fast food restaurant with a heavy focus on drive-in business. So it would be expected to do much better during Covid-19 than sit-down restaurants.

Wendy's is currently at -16% footfall versus last year at the same time. Restaurants generally have low margins and high fixed costs, so this does not look very profitable. This week was at least better than last week, but their progress recently has still been uneven. And overall, they still haven't managed to improve over where they were in early August.

How about retail? Let's take a look at Banana Republic, which is a moderately upscale clothing retailer.

Banana Republic is currently at -7.5% footfall versus last year. On one hand, retailers also have relatively low margins and high fixed costs, so they are unlikely to be thrilled with this. And under normal conditions, these numbers would be considered "bad" and recessionary. But, on the other hand, compared with how badly things have gone previously for them this year (and continue to be for others), this may still feel like a "win." And they have improved over the last couple of weeks.

Their performance has been strangely erratic. For example, they appeared to have fully recovered in August. But for some reason, they then regressed and are now worse than they were before. So, some unpredictable factors appear to be in play with them, and it's difficult to predict what might happen next. So we'll just continue to