News from johnpatrick.com

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Covid

Scientific American reported researchers at MIT are developing cheap, fast and easy to use diagnostics for Covid-19 which can deliver results in minutes. The test would be based on saliva. This could lead the way toward adequate testing to keep things under control. With so many unvaccinated, the virus is not going to disappear, so we need to work toward the optimum combination of vaccination, testing, and hygiene. The WHO has a dashboard which shows what is going on country by country. Globally, as of December 17, 2021, there have been 296.5 million confirmed cases of COVID-19, including 5.5 million deaths. A total of 9.1 billion vaccine doses have been administered. The unvaccinated continue to be a major problem. Hospitals are still filling up and some are stopping elective procedures to make beds and staff available for care of the unvaccinated. They are being very unfair to our hospitals.

Space

The big event last week was the launch of the Webb telescope. Visit the “Where is Webb?” page and see a snapshot of the current position, distance to go , and cruise speed. As of noon on Friday, the telescope was traveling at nearly 1,000 mph at 72% of the way to its destination at L2, a mere 254 million miles away. There are still many things which could wrong but, so far, the amazing engineering feats have played out to perfection.

Wall Street

Tech stocks still taking a big hit. A knowledgeable friend told me a negative correlation between PE multiples and interest rates and the 10 year t-note yields have moved up to 1.74 and rising. Tech stocks generally have higher PE’s so they suffer more. Also, analysts think the values were too high and a de-risking is needed. I remain bullish on tech. Might take some time to get strong again. GAMMAT stocks were all flat or down but are still above $10 trillion and 26% of S&P 500. Apple got to $3 trillion market cap but then pulled back with the others. The other techs have suffered a rout except AirBnB.

Crypto

Crypto got hit hard stable but still at $2 trillion and 18% of gold. Coinbase had a sympathetic decline but their prospects look good to me. I remain bullish overall for crypto. I expect to see some regulatory moves, which would be good, and hopefully approval of some ETFs. Billionaire Ray Dalio said it would be ok for institutional investors to hold 2% in bitcoin. If they take his advice, BTC could move dramatically.