Aviva Share Discussion Threads

[paleales] 27/6/2020 14:33

SocGen, Suisse, Peel Hunt , Goldman sachs TOP PICKS for July recovery
27th June 2020 FT Subscription with screenshot

[p0pper] 27/6/2020 13:37

Not really quite sure why this corona virus is different to MERS, SARS, HIV, EBOLA etc as we never locked down for any of them and we never went through any (impending) recession / depression so have all the world got this wrong by locking down this time costing the world economy trillions of $

[spud] 27/6/2020 13:09

Surely more important is the % of deaths v population. Most people who contract the virus don't even know they've had it. The death rate (for healthy individuals) is minuscule. Why all the navel gazing re the infection rate?spud

[yf23_1] 27/6/2020 12:38

Personally I don't trust any of the world data.
Take Russia for instance..they've been getting over 7,000 cases a day for 2 months yet their deaths have been between 100-200 per day for that period.

[wba1] 26/6/2020 19:42

Surprised at the Generali move. Asset management is not their strength and the US even less so. Unless they have big plans in this area it seems more like diversifying for the sake of it.

[spud] 26/6/2020 15:23

Predictably, the London Market (like a faithful old dog) obediently follows the Yanks down....spud

[bothdavis] 26/6/2020 14:54

Hi again,

No, I don't think this is being pursued by any Senior practitioners. It s view of A&E practitioners and those involved in Respiratory illnesses.

[wba1] 26/6/2020 14:40

I have no idea what constitutes a 'second wave' as opposed to a flare up of the initial wave, and from all I have seen even the epidemiologists lack any rigorous definitions. So debates about such matters are rather like the old medieval question of pins and angels. The two comments I would make on this are;

* the modelling has not been good. However, models are always at their dodgiest when there are multiple values requiring insertion by guess rather than being derived either from first principles or existing data. The models have improved considerably as data has become available allowing a more robust basis for the values.

* however, the further we get into this event the more I despair of the use of statistics, especially by the media but sometimes led by those who should know better. The most glaring example is the repeated use of one way analyses to illustrate the greater risk to certain sub populations. As any halfway competent statistician will tell you, one way analyses can be deeply misleading with the apparent relationship explained by a hidden variable. Everyone on this thread should understand this since it is fundamental to risk pricing in insurance.

I am afraid there is only one cause of this statistical fiasco, and that is the government. They are, almost to a man, only qualified in innumerate fields and need to take their socks off to count beyond 10. And they have exacerbated the problem by creating an exclusive brethren to advise them, focused on Imperial and their own civil service experts. If ever there was a case for having a range of advisors in order to evaluate the range of models and opinions, this was it. Instead, the expert groups in Oxford and Cambridge have been largely ignored. I would not trust the bunch of shysters in Westminster to run a bath.

[cjac39] 26/6/2020 13:54

plenty of evidence but depends through which lens you look. infections are noisy and unreliable. more testing equals more infections. people are testing positive for as much as 50 days but only virus shedding for 2-3 at the start. deaths and icu stats are the best barometer but even that is hard as they report died with covid and died because of covid. so i agree noisy data but certainly enough to know we have been locked down unnecessarily and we should never listen to an epidemiologist who brings out another exponential model based on erroneous assumptions. the test for lockdown release should be by the minute, by the hour, by the day not in 2-4 weeks because its politically expedient.

anyway enough ranting - I'm off to live in Sweden....

[colonel a] 26/6/2020 12:21

Data anomalies within the UK.
Infection rates falling fastest in areas with highest infection rates but still low % of total infections.
Curves in different places are similar in that they go up and down but they are definitely not the same.
With enough twiddling and fudge factors you can get a history match on almost any model - what counts is how your match holds going forwards.

Data quality is dire, being something of a chauvinist I would expect the UK to lead the way but we don't even know the total number of deaths to within ?,000s

I see no evidence that anybody actually knows in detail how we got where we are, and hence where we might be going, but some explanations are more plausible than others.

[cjac39] 26/6/2020 12:03

What data anomalies? Every curve in every country, lockdown, partial lockdown or no lockdown is the same. Gompertz explosion followed by decay. Carehome and nosocomial infection adjusts from low death rate to high like U.K., us, Sweden , Spain vs Germany for eg.

[colonel a] 26/6/2020 11:29

Bothdavis,
Unlikely as it seems that theory could explain some of the data anomalies seen since lockdown.
Do you know if anybody is pursuing it?

[eurofox] 26/6/2020 09:44

good stuff cjac39

[cjac39] 26/6/2020 09:20

Corona viruses are not novel nor new nor exceptional. This mutation has nasty side effects for people with metabolic issues who also tend to be old. There is no second wave. It arrived much earlier than recorded because the majority of the population is asymptomatic or has innate cross T cell immunity. It was declining from the first day and was never exponential. If you want to take a data led view rather than a model group think nonsense view you could worse than look up Michael levitt who btw has a Nobel prize in his cupboard.

[bothdavis] 26/6/2020 09:03

From a Doctor currently working in Hospitals: They are now thinking that this IS the 'second wave'. In Nov through to Jan they can now see a large spike of patients with 'unknown flu like symptoms' They are thinking that is has since mutated to a stronger form as we see now, interesting......

[eurofox] 26/6/2020 08:37

I think there is a theory that because the virus' job is to survive, the variant that does survive is a weaker one because the host that it infects do not die, therefore passing the virus on to many more people. If a strong variant kills many of its hosts, its transmission paths are somewhat curtailed.

[cjac39] 26/6/2020 08:32

if you would like to point me to some scientific evidence of that i would happily stand corrected. i understand it has different genomics but the concept of something weakening is nonsense.

[snorky123] 26/6/2020 07:33

sadly you are not well informed , the virus continually mutates and as such with viruses weakens with each mutation . The same happened with Sars .

[cjac39] 25/6/2020 22:16

The concept the virus is weakening is utter nonsense. It’s the same virus and as virulent as ever. But it’s bumped into enormous swathes of the population with innate immunity from other corona virus infections and people who are asymptomatic.

[gary1966] 25/6/2020 18:10

DOW trading between 50 and 200DMA and FTSE getting support from the 50DMA presently. Best I can come up with at the moment EI. Like you I haven't a clue.

[essentialinvestor] 25/6/2020 18:02

cyberian, very much hope so. There is definite seasonality with flu and cold.
Increasing VitD levels in warmer weather may be one reason for lower hospital admissions, it might possibly suggest the virus in the UK weakening, however that's
highly speculative atm.

Find wider equity markets very difficult to read atm, new bull market or bear market rally.

[gary1966] 25/6/2020 16:33

I stupidly sold my core holding on the 12th June and have struggled to get back in but relieved that I was given the opportunity this morning and luckily scalped a few pence. Gap at 262.20p not quite closed this morning but near as damn it at 262.40p being the low point today. I do still wonder about the gap lower down but not prepared to miss the opportunity to get back in today and will use any closing of that gap to buy a trading tranche again.

[cyberian] 25/6/2020 14:45

EI...very true but I am quite optimistic as per my earlier post...problem is as Gary states we need to clamp down on wayward behaviour...we need to try and keep a lead on containing infections. Pleased that I have just tested negative under an Imperial initiative...phew!

[cjac39] 25/6/2020 14:42

it is difficult to explain with a theory that we are still highly susceptible and second wave is any day now, how the marches with no social distancing and may bank holiday visits to the beach have led to a continued decline in UK cases, UK deaths, calls to 111 triage (age groups especially on marches) and uk icu occupancy. this happened 4 weeks ago and time to symptoms is 4-7 days on average.

the data studied over many decades does point to northern hemispheres having corona viruses in winter and southern in summer. edgar hope Simpson studied this extensively. funnily enough the current data fits this quite well given this is a corona virus.