Corona highlight: my abs made Bella’s list of Everyday Rectangles. I must not be popping because she put them in horizontally. In my defense, I’ve lost a lot of cardio with the ski hills closing…

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Home School

It is absolutely essential to separate ourselves so we get a break from each other. The ONLY time we are completely overlapping is at dinner.

Today Bella set the schedule

Art proving very popular with kids and parents. It always runs long! We use youtube videos of “how to draw” with iPads and headphones. Yesterday was leprechauns, today was a safari collage (each kid did an animal and a piece of vegetation). Monica did the monkey!

Spelling quiz – eight words at each kids’ grade level (24 total) then write a short story using the words, share the story with the group, teacher floats and helps one-on-one. Very light editing with the Grade One kid as its more about writing, than spelling for her. I gave Bella a feather for achievement as she did a great job (photo below). Lexi managed to use every word in her story.

FaceTime calls to end the school day for our youngest and her pals. VERY popular for the kids in the family who are social. Consider for the adults that are social as well!

Cali Governor says schools might not open again this year. Local scuttlebutt from our education contacts is 8-week closure. By that stage, they will probably flag the year (we end third-week May).

Winter storm coming tomorrow, after a beautiful day today. Our plan:

1. Two movies
2. Clean the house
3. Hero shoveling for our elderly neighbors
4. Father-son gym work, Axel going to tagalong for my program

Read aloud with all three went well – we used “Report Card Trouble” from Berenstain Bears’ => game was…

• Youngest picks the book, at her level
• Rotate reading
• Oldest has to read upside down while showing pages
• Kinda high stakes to read in front of your siblings

30-minutes was plenty of time for all, including an 11-year old and the teacher!

Writer’s workshop was starting a letter to other kids about what it’s like to be locked down, what they are enjoying and ideas for kids/parents around the world.

Outside lunch before the storm!

Virus Updates

Positives in a longterm care facility announced yesterday – a resident and an employee – not good. It’s in Loveland, just north of Boulder County.

Best advice I’ve heard about limiting spread is to simply stay the heck away from known hotspots (States, Counties, Cities, Zip codes).

Boulder County up to 11 confirmed and community transfer was documented on March 17th, remember that means the virus arrived some time prior.

Six-day growth rate of positives at 33% in Colorado (183 cases). Cases seem low and likely reflect a lack of testing. I expect we explode by the weekend, unfortunately (NYC popped today).

Here’s a helpful article about the “why” of the recommendations concerning social distance, washing hands and cleaning surfaces. It’s all about reducing the probability of infection.

State gradually shutting down – wish it was faster – wish they were locking down hot spot counties and the high-country. The mountains, particularly, are simple to lockdown and limit to essential travel only. We are far, far from the successful example in South Korea.

Stealth Transmission in the news => this will be essential to understand in highsight

• Thinking back across the month
• Three of us had brief unexplained fevers in last 28 days
• Girls currently have dry coughs (3/17) after we started self-isolation on 3/13
• Every symptom, every cough (!), gets our attention

NOTE: If stealth transmission is for real then we each need to assume we are asymptomatic carriers every single time we leave our houses.

We need to expand testing but still lack capacity, or a consistent message.

I have not read a single report about contact tracking and asymptomatic transmission in Colorado.

Bill Gates did an AMA: says 6-10 week shutdown. We need more realistic messaging from the Feds.

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Markets & Finance

Limit down open after an up-day yesterday. I’m waiting for the SP500 to approach 2,200 before I rebalance again. Yo-yo market getting close, circuit breakers tripping, Ackman speaking of the endtimes on TV.

I am telling myself:

• Don’t sweat the small stuff (as we sail off the cliff)
• Look for ways to help those who have helped you
• Look for ways to help community => it’s why I’m sharing every good idea I come across.

People that never talk about money are starting to talk about money. Other friends rolling along shopping, socializing, thinking about travel (that will change).

30% market down, high personal cash burn rate, service businesses stopped dead, what happened in 4 months in 2008 has happened in four WEEKS in 2020.

High personal cash needs, and an overallocation towards equities, forces you to sell stocks into a down market. It’s a big reason why a strategy with bonds/treasuries makes sense => even when bond yields don’t “make sense.”

Treasury secretary talking about 20% unemployment – impact from stopping the US/EU economies are unknowable. What is certain: a massive sudden deflationary shock.

When everything moves down in price (equities, bonds, gold, oil) => people wonder why => I think it indicates a global deleveraging (sell it all!) hugely deflationary. Kinda explains the hedge fund guys panicking, as a class.

Correlations that were nice while they lasted, and leveraged to the hilt with all-time low interest rates, have broken down. LTCM for many, I guess.

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Community

Moa, our aupair, made it back to Sweden! Yay! One of the last planes into Frankfurt and, then, Stockholm.

Internal flights closing in EU countries – how long for USA?

Washington State is “ahead” in terms of virus spread, with Seattle/Amazon/Microsoft being impacted, I expect we will see a lot of community activism from the Pacific NW => Gates did an AMA today. These people are smart, educated, connected and wealthy. They are not the sort to sit around.

I have an essay on “being spoiled” in my drafts – written before the crisis. Turns out there was no need to make my life harder in order to generate humility & gratitude. Life did it for me.

The central premise of the spoiled essay is…

Being spoiled is when I think my life is hard but it really isn’t.

Most important thing, gut feel is you need to be gearing up for a 30-day period at home and 60-days of home schooling.

Human nature is to expect things to blow over quickly (denial), then get depressed (despair), then never end (acceptance?).

Or you can jump straight to anger… 😉

Above is a pic of our back-up fridge. We think we have a lot but it will be gone in days. I’m going to let everything run out: (a) to avoid shopping alongside sick people; and (b) so I learn what’s important in this sort of situation.

I have to say, I am getting a lot more respect for preppers. I’d always pooh-poohed the idea of the zombie apocalypse. The most advanced countries in the history of the world will have been completely shut down across 60-days.

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If you need some reading ideas… there is something I picked up from George Soros:

https://www.amazon.com/Alchemy-Finance-George-Soros/dp/0471445495

Social systems move from under- to over-regulation based on crisis experience. Each move setting up the next. I suspect we will see this coming out of this crisis.

The Soros book is a good read and getting a better understanding of his political philosophy is worth your lockdown time:

https://www.amazon.com/Defense-Open-Society-George-Soros/dp/1541736702

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Local Update

People in Boulder starting to get it. Everyone in the neighborhood keeping six feet distance between non-family groups. Families still staying close – this will change once the infection pattern shifts from between household to within households. We are a ways away from that because we’re not truly locked down.

Asian experience in a 14-day lockdown. First you see the positives from last week’s infections. Second you see the infections from those people infecting their families.

I came across a good metaphor – would you take an M&M from a 100-piece pack if you knew there were two inside that would kill you. If you’re at a St Paddy’s Day frat party then this is something to reflect on.

Throughout the county, the school district is giving food out to all kids, no questions asked. My kids couldn’t figure out why anyone would need to give away food and were worried homeless people would kidnap kids to get free food. I settled them down and used the opening to talk about food insecurity for many in our community.

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Personal Finance

Actually paid attention to the paper losses during rebalancing, ouch!

Down 30% is harder to lean into. Four years annual living expenses went up in smoke yesterday (paper losses). Put a year and a half equivalent (personal living expenses) into equities today from bonds.

Two conference calls tomorrow to discuss increasing equity weightings.

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Home Life

Kids made a leprechaun trap – overnight, I tossed in some money from my grandparents – they were thrilled with commemorative coins from Canada’s 1967 Centennial.

Community

Why don’t we allocate the first two hours of every shopping day to seniors and their caregivers? There will be less virus present early in the day.

Not my idea and I can’t remember where I saw for credit, probably Twitter.

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Virus Spread

Italy seems to be showing 5-day incubation period – some good news. Also data from benefit of early lockdown vs late lockdown. Early shows way smaller peak.

Real-time evidence of flattening the curve. Lodi had the first Covid-19 case in Italy, and implemented a shutdown on Feb 23. Bergamo waited until March 8.
Look at the difference.

Incredible research by @drjenndowd, @melindacmills & co-authors. https://t.co/JYf1F5GnYu pic.twitter.com/iMVXBJ59Y6

— Don Moynihan (@donmoyn) March 15, 2020

Note the successful lockdown city’s cases are still rising after 16 days. If you don’t lock early then you will be locking for double the public’s expectation.

Less good news was Washington Post reporting stealth transmission from up to a million asymptomatic people with the virus. Makes sense: the virus is using kids and young people to spread itself.

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The state is opening a testing facility in Telluride / could it be the lack of positives was due to a complete lack of testing? MEXICO – you need to be thinking about this possibility!

A better message is going out to the public with the state ramping up testing in the high country and encouraging more testing. Private companies coming on board. Polis sent state nurses to Telluride. That got me thinking – a lack of positives might indicate a lack of testing, not a lack of the virus.

Virus was in Vail Village March 1st at the latest. This has implications for every location linked to a hotspot => Mexico fooling itself right now. For example, it’s not possible to get a flu shot in Cabo. They’re unprepared and will be surprised, when something unsurprising happens.

Rerun the math on incubation and positives: five-day positive test growth rate is 37% with 160 yesterday. County figures not out yet so don’t know Boulder County.

It will be interesting to see how we were wrong about virus growth, in hindsight. How large a magnitude are we missing right now?

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College kids partying – start testing them and widely-publicizing their deaths and positives. These kids respond to fear and authority.

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Letting the mail sit in the box overnight, then opening away from my desk/kids/keyboard and washing hands afterwards. Main risk would be our man, Reno, getting respiratory droplets on it.

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Global

1. Iran released 85,000 prisoners, probably after a big chunk were infected.
2. EU closed its borders for 30 days

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Home School

Axel Set The Schedule

Big Picture:

• The actual learning we need to achieve isn’t that much – if you are a alpha-go-getter then you’re going to burn your entire family out if the pace is too high – check out the pace used at the best schools for your kids’ age
• We will run a 3:1 day cycle (on/off)
• This implies a need for 45-days of lesson plans
• Our school district is great – the benefits of a large PUBLIC education system! I suspect the private education sector will need to tag along with the best public system. BVSD can easily share into other districts.
• We will split the school day between mom/dad and stay out of each other’s lessons. Pacing!
• No phones at school

Our elementary school has a bird for a mascot. The teachers award paper feathers for outstanding behavior and the kids stick these feathers on a big bird on the front hall of the school. Axel came up with a craft idea to make a big BYRN so we had something to stick out feathers on. He’s been outstanding. I gave him a feather for leadership.

Math Enrichment

1. Lexi – intro to probability – carrying on from fractions
2. Axel – multiplication with carrying & learning how to work with perimeter measurement
3. Bella – intro to 2d and 3d shapes, scavenger hunt around the house to find/draw geometric shapes (six per page/shape)

Added “Anti-Coloring Book” app to Bella’s iPad for her to try

Started Science with The Tiny Seed from Amazon Prime – slowed them down after recess – 10 min movie.

Main Science lesson plan was first experiment in mind-blowing science – talked about gases, liquids, solids

https://www.amazon.com/Scientific-Explorer-First-Blowing-Science/dp/B000BURAP2

Personal

• Don’t become a casualty
• Create a new routine, then maintain it
• Exercise in nature
• Eat good food
• The online group I train with, mtntactical.com, has a $9 7-week plan you can buy.

I didn’t get a picture of myself yelling down the basement stairs when my oldest kicked her brother. My voice box was sore for hours! Our youngest hid under a table for 20-minutes. So, it is not all Kum-by-ya and home baking here.

Still, we are doing better than I would have expected, thanks to TINA => There Is No Alternative

1. Keep your standards
2. Get dressed in the morning
3. Leave the house (we lap the block to start home school)
4. No zeros
5. Start an online contest (I’m tracking pullups in March)
6. Buy a home exercise plan – Monica and I each have new plans

Told Monica I expected a limit down open (off 5%). Got that, and more across the day.

Fed cuts rates to 0%. Didn’t think that would matter, and it didn’t.

My view, total US lockdown by the end of the month

Sending our aupair back to Sweden, if she can get there – perhaps via Canada (nope, they locked down). Decision was simple once we each asked ourselves… where would I like to be? Home, naturally.

Kids being home schooled, we’ve self isolated since Thursday but there are interactions that have happened since then. Won’t get a true lockdown until this evening when Monica returns from the airport.

My To Do:

• Get education.com on iPads
• Get k5learning.com on iPads
• Get the anti coloring book app
• Week’s worth of clothes packed in a ready bag
• Cars gassed up

Kids love homeschool, which we are calling Daddy School, or Corona School amongst ourselves.

Lexi designed our first day. We started late because the kids were making cards for Moa, our aupair.

Kinda crazy teaching kids, searching flights and rebalancing into a plummeting market.

I expect the US will be locked down internal/external and tourists told to go home. If I had to guess then by next Monday.

Things are moving extremely fast. Choices that seemed extreme four days ago, now seem to have been prudent.

Eagle County still rationing testing, but have improved their message. Hope Colorado’s director of public health checks out how South Korea slowed the spread. There must be a shortage of testing capacity. Monica saw plenty of people out at Vail Pass yesterday when she drove home. People partying in Downtown Nashville. That’s going to change once American deaths tick up.

We tend to under-react then over-react => remember 9/11.

Axel’s recess, and lunch break activity, was football with me – his idea of heaven.

Pack City, UT taking this serious // note this action was taken after the FIRST community positive => https://www.parkrecord.com/news/summit-county-implements-sweeping-business-restrictions-closures-aimed-at-slowing-spread-of-covid-19/

Vail still open as far as I know. Significant public health failure on their part but completely understandable to try to get through Spring Break and avoid certain financial pain. It’s going to be so much worse, unfortunately.

Asians would have the national guard taking temperatures at Vail Pass and the Eisenhower Tunnel. The high-country is easy to lock down.

Rebalancing again, the numbers were dropping faster than I could update my spreadsheet

Monica ran a baking “special” during school – huge hit and the kids handled all the clean up. Lots of Home-Econ coming their way.

I think we are going to see Europe and the USA lockdown. I have no idea what that’s going to mean for the world. Definitely, not good economically and I have no idea what happens when you shut down that much economic activity.

Canada shut it’s border to everyone other than residents, citizens and US residents/Green Card. Australia/NZ/Israel 14-day isolation for arrivals – we’re all heading that way. That’s why I made it super easy for our aupair to go home. She was due to finish early May anyone. Now, we are officially on our own.

Writing assignment for the kids was a description of the first day of home school – Lexi wrote fiction, others discussed my delicious pancakes! They’re happy in their own world. We read the stories to each other. It was nice.

Our aupair was in Florida, she didn’t bring her passport with her. In the time it took her to get back to Colorado, Denmark/Canada/Norway closed borders. Big effort to try to get her out of USA. Monica spent the day at the airport. Still there as I post this. In the end got a cheap flight ($611) to get her home. Hope the plane takes off back to Europe.

Beautiful day here in Boulder. Axel and I played football on the upper field of Flatirons Elementary. Just a few people walking around. Nobody using the field, perhaps we’re not supposed to be there.

Anything highly leveraged is toast. Business activity will be going straight off a cliff. Doing what I can for small local businesses – how will they make rent if they can’t open? Romney recommending $1,000 UBI for every adult in the USA. Airlines asking for $50 billion.

SP500 is just about 30% down from the peak. Sale of a lifetime. I expect financial markets to fall much further.