Tag Archives: Disease cycle

Feb 3 2020

Coronavirus as a Financial Contagion – Chinese Markets Suffer Steep Losses Upon Opening…


Re-Posted from The Conservative Tree House on February 3, 2020 by 

Even before the Coronavirus surfaced in China there was lower manufacturing factory activity within the Chinese economy.  The necessary response within China to control the spread of the Coronavirus has been to shut down most commerce.  Factories, schools &  businesses throughout China are empty as various containment measures are underway.

The direct result of this response is a severe drop in economic activity.  Many analysts are speculating about how this cessation of production might impact supply chains that use Chinese component goods.  Obviously, with manufacturing facilities closed any downstream multinational company relying on those products may have supply issues as soon as existing inventories deplete.

There is a natural lag before the manufacturing void hits the consumer market; however, the financial markets are forward looking and they are already reflecting severe drops in stock prices, depending on the dependency/exposure of the company and/or sector.

BEIJING/SHANGHAI (Reuters) – Chinese stock and commodity markets fell heavily on Monday as the death toll from a coronavirus epidemic in China rose to 361 and investors retreated into safe-haven assets in the first trading session after an extended Lunar New Year break.

Markets plunged at the open in their first session since Jan. 23, when the outbreak of the newly identified virus had claimed only 17 lives in Wuhan city, the epicenter of the outbreak, in Hubei province.

[…]  The Shanghai Composite index shed 8% to hit one-year low on Monday, wiping almost $370 billion off the market value, according to Reuters calculations.

The yuan began trade onshore at its weakest level this year. Iron, oil and copper traded in Shanghai all dropped by their daily limits, catching up with global price falls as the spread of the virus has weighed on the world’s growth outlook.

Investors were bracing for volatility when onshore trade in Chinese stocks, bonds, yuan and commodities resumed, following a steep global selldown on fears about the impact of the virus on the world’s second-biggest economy.

Looking to head off panic, China’s central bank injected 1.2 trillion yuan ($173.8 billion) of liquidity into the markets via reverse repo operations on Monday. (read more)

In a very ironic way, any company that readjusted their supply chain, during the two years of uncertainty over U.S. -vs- China trade discussions and tariffs, will likely be in a much better position than those companies who remained anchored to Chinese manufacturing dependency.

It is going to be interesting to see what the scale of these downstream economic effects are going to be.  Many multinationals have adopted very thin supply chains and use ‘just-in-time’ delivery for replenishment.  If those companies cannot get resupplied they will be at the greatest financial risk.

Simultaneously, there’s an ironic cover for China within the lack of economic activity.  Any pre-existing economic malaise or contraction can now be disguised by Beijing as the result of the current Coronavirus shut-downs.

Feb 3 2020

Coronavirus & HIV – The Truth?


Armstrong Economics Blog/Disease

Re-Posted Feb 3, 2020 by Martin Armstrong

The conspiracy network is alive and thriving and the gist of this is that the coronavirus is created in some lab because it has a sequence that is similar to HIV. I have two very good sources and they point out that this claim is MOST LIKELY completely bogus. Why? Because this very same sequence also exists in many other viruses and it is NOT unique to the coronavirus or HIV, which by the way was a virus.

This claim comes from a questionable scientist based in India where he took the genome sequences of Wuhan coronavirus, without any peer review, and claimed that it had similarities to the genome of…HIV. Some have argued this is why it is even spreading so fast. Sorry, that is because of how it is transmitted which is like the seasonal flu whereas HIV was transmitted predominantly from sexual contact.

Reliable sources found 4 insertions in the spike glycoprotein (S) which are unique to the 2019-nCoV and are not present in other coronaviruses. Most interestingly, amino acid residues in all the 4 inserts have identity or similarity to those in the HIV-1 gp120 or HIV-1 Gag.

Before we jump to the next zombie apocalypse, I question why any reliable scientist would sport out such findings without peer-review. Everything is turning on this distrust of China. If the coronavirus was splice in a lab by them for military purposes, then surely they would not hand the evidence over to the rest of the world. Let’s be rational here.

Given that the Wuhan coronavirus (2019-nCoV) appears to have four additions to its genome that similar viruses, like SARS and MERS, are lacking. This implies a lower death-rate, but perhaps a higher contagion rate being more similar to the seasonal flu. These additions being touted by the scientist in India claim they are identical or extremely similar to parts of the HIV genome. The authors go on to speculate that this may be why the coronavirus is spreading so quickly, and also that something sinister may be afoot. He did not bother to elaborate on what methods were used to genetically insert these into the coronavirus.

Sources checking whether it was true that HIV and coronavirus have similarities found that while these sequences do pop up in HIV, they ALSO pop up in so many other viruses. There’s absolutely NO EVIDENCE that they are immediately suspect or that they were somehow genetically spliced in by the lab in China which is the implication. One out of four sequences is indeed found in both Wuhan coronavirus and HIV. The same sequence also appears in a virus that infects Streptococcus (spherical bacteria), which is of a rat virus in origin. They also appear in what is known as an “acute bee paralysis virus.”

Sorry, perhaps the culprit may just be mother nature and not some mad scientist in a lab. We should wait for a peer-to-peer review, but this claim from India appears to be bogus on the surface. It is not pointing out that this sequence also appears in many other viruses

Feb 3 2020

How Long Does it Take to Accept the Revelations of the Economic Confidence Model?


Armstrong Economics Blog/ECM

Re-Posted Feb 2, 2020 by Martin Armstrong

COMMENT: Marty, I have to respectfully disagree with the comment made by CR in the last blog, “The Dow & the Economic Confidence Model”. In the email he said, “Marty, I have to laugh. Only those who have followed you more 20 years understand you have discovered the hidden order behind the facade.” Not all of us that know have been around that long nor did it take us long to figure out.

I would say it would take one with their own mind, methods and models, and like you said someone willing to learn, that would be able to capture all of this and add what they already have to your model. There are those of us with a lot to bring to the game that haven’t been around that long but started to get it right away when we first started studying the model. I’m sure that was just a general statement focusing on themselves and their immediate group, but I found it inaccurate nonetheless.

Regardless, keep up the good work on your part.

EM

REPLY: I think what he really means is that I have had similar comments from people who have been followers only since 2012. What they have expressed is watching geopolitical events but this time the Dow peaked on the very day. Just comments distinguishing events from markets.

The Wave #932 saw so much from the precise day of the low in the US share market April 1st, 1994 to the high on July 20th, intermixed with the move in the dollar when it made its low in June 1997 and the Asian currency crisis hit in July. Of course, there was the Russian bond collapse which then set off a contagion that resulted in a massive liquidity crisis. Global markets were all collapsing because the “club” lost a fortune on Russia and their bribes being paid to the IMF to keep the loans going. When that manipulation failed, they had to start selling everything everywhere to raise cash even the collapse in the Japanese yen.

The peak not only marked the beginning of the Long-Term Capital Management Crisis forcing the Federal Reserve to step in for the first time to bail out a hedge fund but it marked the start of the Euro which was officially set on January 1st, 1999 and then at the bottom in 2002, that was the introduction of euro paper currency.

The Pi target marked precisely 911 which changed our world dramatically tp the day, and then 2002 was the bottom of the share market again. There are just so many events that take place with this model that it proves people who refuse to accept it are predetermined like those who refused to ever accept that the earth was not flat. All they do is try to disparage the messenger because they cannot explain why the message is wrong.

It takes some convincing, but not necessarily 20 years. I think what he meant was that after 20 years, they just expect it to work in this fashion.

 

Feb 2 2020

The Dow & the Economic Confidence Model


Armstrong Economics Blog/ECM

Re-Posted Feb 2, 2020 by Martin Armstrong

COMMENT: Marty, I have to laugh. Only those who have followed you more 20 years understand you have discovered the hidden order behind the facade. Fantastic call on this turn in the ECM. Once again to the very day in the Dow. And people do not think your model is real? They must be idiots who also worship Greta.

All the best

REPLY: I know. They cannot get their head around the fact that the Economic Confidence Model has pinpointed so many events in markets to geopolitical events to the very day. This proves BEYOND a shadow of a doubt that there is a hidden order behind the chaos.

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The 1987 Crash and the new highs into 1989 along with the Japanese Bubble may be the most famous forecasts I have done with this model. But there have been so many others which have worked to the precise day in markets like this one to within the same week generally regarding geopolitical events.

The 1998 forecast also landed me being named hedge fund manager of the year. I had sold the stock market the very day of the high on July 20th, 1998 and caught the ride down for the Long-Term Capital Management debacle.

The forecasts it made back in 1981 were also amazing. It was off 2 days for the peak in interest rates when the Federal Reserve raised the discount rate to 14% on May 5th when the model targeted May 7th. It picked on the Pi turning point the negotiations to hand Hong Kong back to China, then on August 21st, Japan agreed to join the G5 which became known as the Plaza Accord on August 21, 1985, when the target was Sunday, August 25th. We even took the back cover of the Economist Magazine for three weeks in July 1985 to announce that the bottom of the cycle of deflation was reached and that a new wave of inflation was about to begin.

While 1989.95 picked the peak in the Bubble Top in Japan, the precise day of the low in the stock market in the USA came on the bottom of that wave on April 1, 1994.

 

After that wave market the precise day of the high in the S&P500 on July 20th, 1998, the Pi turning point picked precisely the day of the 911 attack. Then the bottom of the wave was to be Sunday November 6th, 2002, and the market bottomed the next week.

The wave which peaked in 2007.15 picked the precise day of the high in the Schiller Real Estate Index. The Pi target marked the precise day Greece applied for the IMF loan beginning the whole European debt crisis.

The top of this wave 2015.75 marked the start of Merkel opening the gates to the European refugees which have been the downfall of Europe. It marked the very day that Russian troops entered Syria. We now have the temporary high in the US stock market at the bottom of this wave.

Sure, no matter what evidence I put forward, there will be people who refuse to believe anything. We need those type of people for that are what make the cycle work. We all also have our personal life-cycle where we grow in experience and knowledge. We begin life ignorant and those who are smart, actually learn from their mistakes. As we proceed through life, we change and adapt so in the early stages of life we buy the high and sell the low. Those of us who are actually intelligent and are capable of learning from our mistakes, mature and then we become the people who sell the high to the novice and buy when they panic and sell everything at the low.

The morons, incapable of ever learning the lessons of life, cry to government that they WOULD HAVE BEEN correct except for some devil who manipulated the market against them. What they are really doing is refusing to admit that they were wrong. That inability to learn the lessons of life keep them perpetually on the wrong side of the cycle. We need those fools. I choose not to be a fool and assume I can teach anyone. If you have the spark of curiosity, then you have the ability to learn and advance in life which is what this journey is all about – the quest for knowledge.

A professor from Princeton University once told me I reminded him of Einstein. I was shocked. I said I was not some genuine is physics. He explained to me that was not what he saw. He said it was my curiosity to try to figure out what made things function. It does not matter what the subject might be or the task. It is the curiosity that made one try to sail across the Atlantic when others feared the end of the world. It has been my curiosity which has driven me to try to understand how a business cycle can act so precisely throughout even ancient history. This has been the curiosity of my life I have tried to share with those who share my curiosity.

 

No, the mainstream press will not report this. It is not something the majority is yet willing to hea

Feb 1 2020

What Percent of the Population Has the Coronavirus?


Armstrong Economics Blog/Disease

Re-Posted Feb 1, 2020 by Martin Armstrong

QUESTION: Marty, it seems that this virus is turning into a major scaremongering contest to boost ratings for people like CNN. Even if we take 10,000 cases in China with a population of 1.3 billion, the number of people infected is infinitesimal. Most people who get flu symptoms do not go to hospitals. It seems to me that even if there were 200,000 people infected with the vast majority never going to the hospital, this is really blown way out of proportion. Do you have any other info?

Thank you for being the only sane person out there.

CS

ANSWER: The population of China is 1.386 billion. If we look at the stats from last year’s flu season, which peaks between December and February according to CDC, the 2018-2019 season, the CDC estimated that 16.5 million people went to a health care provider for the flu and more than 34,000 people died in the US last year. That was 5% of the American population. The proportion of outpatient visits for influenza-like illness increased slightly to 1.7%, which is below the national baseline of 2.2%. Even if we assume that 5% of the population in China get this coronavirus, that would still be less that 0.005% of the population of which about 2% would die. Even if the death rate were 10% as the conspiracy theories love to claim, then the loss to the population would still minimal.

This is by no means at the Black Plague level or some biological weapon with a kill ratio of 90%+. There may be many more people with the virus, but they do not seek medical outpatient help because it is still only like normal flu.

Jan 31 2020

WHO Names this Coronavirus a World Emergency


Armstrong Economics Blog/Disease

Re-Posted Jan 31, 2020 by Martin Armstrong

The Coronavirus has been declared by the World Health Organization (WH) to be an emergency. As I reported yesterday, the death rate may not be as high as SARS which was 10%, but its spread rate is far greater. The number of cases jumped in a day from 7700 to 9682. The WHO defines a global emergency — formally, a Public Health Emergency of International Concern — as “an extraordinary event which is determined to constitute a public health risk to other States through the international spread of disease and to potentially require a coordinated international response.” This is the sixthdeclared in the past decade.

There have been only five such emergencies declared in the past decade:

  1. the H1 virus that caused an influenza pandemic (2009),
  2. West Africa’s Ebola outbreak (2013-2016),
  3. polio (2014),
  4. Zika virus (2016),
  5. and the ongoing Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (2019)

Four of those six global emergencies took place during the last ECM and this one began on the turn at the bottom. Since our disease model on influenza is a 13-year cycle, that is also pointing to 2022 as a crisis year. If this coronavirus has the same life-expectancy for its global spread before reaching a peak, that also points to 2022. The good news, the death rate seems to be legitimate and it still runs less than 3%.

This has the potential to reduce economic growth further on an overall global scale

Jan 30 2020

What is the origin of the Coronavirus 2019-nCov?


Armstrong Economics Blog/Disease

Re-Posted Jan 30, 2020 by Martin Armstrong

COMMENT: Hi Martin,
I totally agree with you that there is absolutely ZERO evidence to support any conspiracy theories about a “weaponized virus”.
But I would like to stress that I still think there is no coincidence that the epicenter occurred in Wuhan where the only Chinese BSL-4 lab exists – a lab that only became fully operational last year, first major “bug” studied was SARS and one of the main researchers working there has published papers regarding novel coronaviruses and bats. I will point out that there have only been three further SARS incidents and TWO of them were due to lab problems with protocols.

I have worked in a few companies where we had BSL labs. There were always “accidents” – most due to typical human attempts to reduce work by ignoring protocols. If you step back and objectively look at probabilities for a novel SARS-like virus to suddenly erupt at exactly this point in time due to some random “shady seafood market” it just seems…highly improbable.
But I will point out that there are some confounding factors if you add in a brand new BSL-4 facility in the vicinity. There are a couple of obvious “vectors” for anyone who has worked in these labs and also understands China – my wife is from Sichuan and I’ve been to China (more than 10 cities across the cardinal directions).

#1: Lots of work at a BSL-4 lab actually takes place at a BSL-2 level. CDC and Chinese officials have pointed out that BSL-2 protocols are completely inadequate for 2019-nCoV.
#2: BSL-4 (and any serious study of both virii and bacterial agents) requires both incubations as well as “test subjects”. These can (and often do) bite…or at least escape from cages.

There is a good Lancet article on the Wuhan origins. Again, having worked in BSL related to study for infectious agents, the Lancet overview of infections and also knowing Chinese “culture” there are a couple of salient points:

#1 Gloves. If BSL-2 protocols were not sufficient and yet lots of tests were being run there….Gloves got contaminated. For the lab – no problems, just toss them out – but for any poor person picking through the garbage and suddenly finding a “treasure trove” of “hardly used” gloves…Well. I’ve been to these markets and the sellers all wore gloves. Filthy gloves.
The massive spike of infected people going to some random market suddenly got an incredible boost as a disease vector.
#2: Serious study of bats for SARS-like virii requires a LOT of bats. Likely brought from the original SARS site. If there is trade in bats…well…overstock is easily sold in the market.

The most interesting facet is not really the origin but the long-term effects on China. Both cultural and, for you models, financial. I think we are about to see a significant “step function” that will impact globally.

It is very significant to me that your model seems to have landed on the “tipping point” for the 2019-nCov. This is extremely significant and, from my perspective, likely to have much broader implications than even your models may predict.

take care and stay warm,
YK

REPLY: We may never know the precise origin. Whether the impact of this virus will be significant and run into 2022 is of extreme interest. There is no question the fact that this took place on the ECM turn date holds the potential for this to be very important. With the American CDC going to China, perhaps this will help to verify the true death rate and stop all the conspiracy stories which do not help us get a true picture of what is taking place. Conspiracy claims that it’s always far worse are the very foundation of the Climate Change activists.

Jan 30 2020

Coronavirus & the ECM


Armstrong Economics Blog/Disease

Re-Posted Jan 30, 2020 by Martin Armstrong

Many have asked that since this Coronavirus appears to have caught everyone’s attention with the turn in the ECM on January 18th, 2020, the questions have poured in asking if this was a major event given our model had been projecting a rise in disease would begin in 2020 coinciding with the new Solar Cycle which should be the lowest in probably 200 years+ meaning colder weather. There is certainly an interesting correlation that we should not ignore. This at the very least warrants a review of the Spanish Flu which killed millions back in 1918.

The first reported case in the Spanish Flue was March 4th, 1918. That did peak out by December 1918 so in that case it was more of the end rather than the beginning which aligned with the ECM. Therefore, the turning point was December 31/Jan 1, 1919. The Journal of the American Medical Association final edition of December 29, 1918 wrote:

“The 1918 has gone: a year momentous as the termination of the most cruel war in the annals of the human race; a year which marked, the end at least for a time, of man’s destruction of man; unfortunately a year in which developed a most fatal infectious disease causing the death of hundreds of thousands of human beings. Medical science for four and one-half years devoted itself to putting men on the firing line and keeping them there. Now it must turn with its whole might to combating the greatest enemy of all–infectious disease.”

While governments are seeking to impose travel restrictions, this virus has a lower death rate under 3% compared to the SARS outbreak of 2003 which reached a 10% death rate. However, what is different with this version of the virus is the infection rate is far greater. This virus escalates exponentially insofar as its infection rate. Clearly, this will impact tourism on a global scale for the media attention with this is far greater and the conspiracy spin is unbelievable from it being a biological weapon and something that was stolen from Canada.

The first reported cases of SARS back in 2003 took about a month before it translated into a surge in cases. Then there was a second surge of infection which hit the hospital sector which came about two months later. This version has a greater infection rate but a lower death rate. This introduces a risk of a greater potential for a pandemic. Therefore, our model shows choppiness in the financial markets until April and a general turning point come around May.

There is clearly a potential for a pandemic in this case of the yet unnamed 2019-nCoV which merits heightened concern.  At the time of writing this post, there is still less than 7,000 cases.  If the people infected in turn infect 2 to 4 others, compared to the normal flu which is about 1.4 infections, then the 6,000 could reach 200,000 within a couple of weeks. The total amount of infections under SARS was only 8,098 across the globe back in 2003.  Therefore, given this version of a coronavirus has a faster infection rate, a pandemic appears likely. The question is our model is pointing to 2022. This virus has already begun to mutate. Does this imply it will mutate and continue into 2022 or will there be yet something else coming our way?

Many people are claiming that the death toll is really 10% and that China is lying. The CDC from America is flying there to assist so we will know a bit more about the veracity of that claim. They also claimed it was a biological weapon and it was stolen from a lab on Canada.

 

Jan 28 2020

Discovering Cycles


Armstrong Economics Blog/Products and Services

Re-Posted Jan 28, 2020 by Martin Armstrong

QUESTION: Speaking of cycles and frequency I guess the question is how to find the exact beginning of a cycle? You say 8.6 is the base frequency. Why not 8.5875? In other words, how do you come up with the exact day a cycle begins?

A

ANSWER: You have to discover them. The 8.6 I discovered from a list of international panics covering 1683 to 1907 that I stumbled upon while doing research in the Firestone Library at Princeton University. There were 26 events within 224 years. That was 8.6153846… When I began to test it, I discovered it was interlaced with volatility, which moves on a different frequency of a base of 6. This is a very deep subject that cannot be addressed in a simple blog post.

 

I will release two books on this subject this year – “The Geometry of Time” and “The Economic Confidence Model.” I am working hard to get a series of books out now. Trying to finish up my goals. These will deal with the cyclical nature of time and the world we live in.

Categories: Products and Services, Understanding Cycles
Jan 28 2020

Coronavirus still appears to be Normal Virus


Armstrong Economics Blog/Disease

Re-Posted Jan 27, 2020 by Martin Armstrong

COMMENT: Thank you for not being the crazy doomsday guy who latches onto every story and then blows it out of proportion. The death rate is as you say, less than 3%. All the wild stories from nurses claiming there 90,000 infected to others trying to claim the death rate will rise to 10% or higher. These just scare tactics from the same people who always claim the end of the world is next week.

BE

ANSWER: The number of cases is up to 2,794 and the reported deaths at 80. The incubation period for this coronavirus is about 14 days. The incubation periods for the last two coronaviruses SARS and MERS, was 2 to 7 days and about 5 days, respectively, according to the CDC.

The duration might be 2 to 3 weeks before you recover fully, but that’s pretty much on par with most flu epidemics. There is absolutely no indication that this is a biological weapon. Had it been, China would NEVER have shared the genetic code. We still see the worst season with 4 different models converging on 2022.

I have pretty good sources and they do not expect this to cause a lot of deaths. As of January 24th, U.S. officials have screened more than 2,000 people from about 200 flights in the active entry screening program which is underway at five U.S. airports. There have been no cases identified as part of the program. China has halted ALL flights out of Wuhan, quarantined the entire city, and canceled major Lunar New Year celebrations.

I wish the world was ending next week. I am tired of paying outrageous taxes. It would be nice to migrate to a different plane of existence. Hopefully, they don’t have corrupt governments, regulations, and taxes there.