Will The Delta Variant Shut Down The Economy?

NFW! 

Tune out the nonsense, turn off the news, and stick to the data, folks. 

The Wall Street clowns are at it again, spreading fear and loathing about the new strain of COVID, the Delta variant, retrofitting a new negative narrative to explain the nonsensical bond market action.   

No Signal, All Noise

The Fed nationalized the bond markets long ago.  Trying to decipher an economic signal from bond yields is equivalent to guessing what price the central authorities in the old Soviet Union would set for blood sausage.  

Are bond yields falling because the economy is about to go into a tailspin or a stock market collapse is imminent?  Anything is possible, and nobody knows the future, but highly unlikely, at least until the Fed starts to pump the breaks.   There is way too much money in the global monetary system.  

The collapse in bond yields is all technical, baby.  What a tremendous shorting opportunity if it were a proper market with true price discovery.  We have done a lot of work analyzing the bond market in the past week and hope to post it for you this weekend. 

Wait for it.  It will be good.  Promise. 

Good Gawd, Such Nonsense

The Delta variant is a real threat to the unvaccinated, especially in the states with relatively low vax rates.

Moreover, many advanced economies are almost at herd immunity — vaxed plus COVID recovered —  including the UK where cases are spiking. 

…it seemed inevitable that new cases of Covid-19 – which had been steadily declining since early January – would begin to rise again. On June 24, the number of daily infections in the UK crossed 16,000, levels not seen since early February when the UK was still in full lockdown.

But the third wave will look very different to the last two. While the Delta variant is considered to be more virulent than any that have previously followed, the UK’s successful vaccination campaign appears to have broken the seemingly inevitable link between cases, hospitalisations, and fatalities. The current hospitalisation rate remains low. There were 182 new hospital admissions on June 22 – a rate of 16 per 1000 new cases – compared with 3,812 admissions on January 12, the height of the second wave, a rate of 84 per 1000 new cases. – Wired

Share Of Population Fully Vaccinated

Number Of COVID-19 Patients In Hospital 

Let The Games Begin

Though Japan has been relatively successful in keeping COVID at bay, the country’s low vaccination rate is rattling nerves as the athletes arrive and the Olympic Games are about to begin.  

Olympics organizers are banning all spectators from the games this year after Japan declared a state of emergency that’s meant to curb a wave of new Covid-19 infections.

It’s the latest setback for the Summer Olympics that have already been delayed for a year and racked up high costs for postponement. The state of emergency will begin Monday and run through Aug. 22, while the games are scheduled from July 23 to Aug. 8. – CNBC

Upshot

Ignore the noise, folks, stay data-dependent.  Change your view as the facts and data change.  

Of course, there are states and countries still at high risk with their low vax rates.  The advanced economies need to pull out all the stops to do all they can to help get shots in the arms of those at risk.   

It’s kind of tough, however, given all the ignoramuses spouting their fascist conspiracy nonsense.  They are the true modern-day brown shirts.