In the morning, I lay in the sun to get some free vitamin D. My bedroom window faces downtown and slightly east. The Suzhou River lies just below my building so there are no neighbors to block the light from coming in. The cat and I just lay in the window nook and chill. It is a nice feeling for a stressful time. Almost like I'm tanning on the beach!

I'll probably go downstairs to get some actual Vitamin D supplements from the pharmacy at some point as well. But that would mean that I'd have to put on my double mask (that probably doesn't work all that well anyway), wear some kind of plastic over my hands (my hands are too big to fit any regular-sized gloves you can buy in China), and basically induce my own panic attack just to get a couple supplies. So instead, this morning I lay in the sun getting some free vitamin D.

I'm high on Vitamin D these days because I found out that Vitamin D supplements prevents acute respiratory infection. It's proven and stuff. So if you're stuck in China somewhere during this Coronavirus outbreak, you need to take heed and go increase your Vitamin D intake in whatever way you can. We still don't really have any idea exactly what we're dealing with.

The scare stat of today is to think that 2 weeks ago we were looking at Wuhan and saying... "Oh, 400-plus confirmed cases of coronavirus. Only 9 people dead. That's not that bad." Those figures come from this CNN report from January 21. Well, as of today, we are at 8,351 confirmed cases in Wuhan with 362 deaths there. That's a 19x increase in confirmed cases and 40x increase in reported deaths. The pessimist in me points to the 6 provinces - Zhejiang, Guangdong, Henan, Hunan, Jiangxi, and Anhui - that currently have more than 400 confirmed cases and says, "Hey, any or all of those regions could turn into another Hubei province 2 weeks from now." Technically, that foreboding prediction is not wrong.

However, that statement ignores the fact that we are seeing an unprecedented voluntary isolation of a billion-plus people all across China. You can see it in some of the links I put in my post from yesterday. And I can see it from my sun-bathing window where the cat is now fully prostrate taking advantage of the last D-enriched rays of the fading morning.

The optimist in me is pointing to that solidarity hoping that it means we have, now that we are 13 days out from the Wuhan Lockdown, turned a corner and now are going to see much slower growth rates of this thing, at least outside of Hubei province. I still have panic attacks that make it hard to sleep at night, so the battle between pessimist and optimist rages within me. It'd be nice if it would stop. But we just have to look at the data (and hope that that data is accurate, which is a whole nother issue not even worth going down the rabbit hole on).

I took this picture yesterday during Shanghai's rush hour:

That's one car and a few brave deliverymen on one of the main arteries in a city of 25 million or so. It's a little busier this morning. But it is an eery situation to say the least. You live in a city like Shanghai for the hustle and bustle. Everyone running around trying to do their thing to make a couple yuan. It's invigorating. Not having that is well... kinda depressing.

Statistically, at least, due to the extreme measures so far undertaken beginning 2 weeks ago, we should see some improvement in the slowdown of the growth rates.

That's the hope, at least. So far, so good. We'll keep watching from home and hoping for the best.

The Chinese markets have that same hope. Yesterday and today we've seen some pretty strong relief rallies, but we still have another 200 points (or about 7%) on the Shanghai ticker to go before we fully recover from the collapse in the market that occurred on the first day of trading after the Chinese New Year holiday.

But those relief rallies in Shanghai have not been nearly as strong as the past 2 days on Wall Street, where it seems traders have pretty much moved on from the Coronavirus Outbreak and are pretty much set on putting in new highs from here until Trump inevitably gets re-elected. Even the US-listed Chinese stocks have gone along for the ride. The main ones I watch these days are Alibaba (BABA), GDS Holdings (GDS), Luckin Coffee (LK), and Noah Holdings (NOAH). All of them are up substantially in the past two days. Here is just what they did yesterday:

LK is the ticker that really tells the story. It is like Tesla, where you have very, very staunch supporters on both the bull and bear sides. Bears had piled on to both thinking the bull market top was upon us... and are subsequently getting REKT. Renowned short-seller Muddy Waters, who made their name shorting nearly all of the Chinese reverse merger frauds back in the early 2010s, recently went short on the name thanks to an 89-page anonymous report documenting their fraud. It's definitely still a fur piece from it's $51 all-time high, but the fraud report seems to make the case that the stub will go to $0. Well, it's not. Expect more fireworks ahead in this name. As far as investment, no one should be near LK or TSLA at this point unless they plan on staying glued to their trading screens all during market hours. That's what those stocks have become - a battle royale between short-sellers and staunch, almost cult-like supporters.

I don't fucking understand this market one fucking bit. And while I'm keeping my retirement and education savings accounts fully invested (that's just my style), I am still pretty excited about earning interest on stablecoins via DeFi. And cash, lots of cash.

Posted via Steemleo