The Bachelorette - Season 16

I've posted a lot about politics and economics on here, and I thought I should switch to something more serious: predictions for the current season of The Bachelorette. Tayshia has just replaced Clare, and as of yet has not eliminated anyone. 

 Episode 6 updates:

I guess I was expecting Ed, Noah, and Demar to be gone earlier, but the bracket still looks good.

Episode 7 updates:

I still have no upsets in the bracket, but I'll really need Ed, Noah, and Demar to go home this week to maintain that status.

2016 Electoral Analysis

I again made a chart designed to help estimate the likelihood of the incumbent president's reelection. The percent vote margin in the 2016 presidential election is shown for each state (note that a few states separate Congressional Districts in the electoral process). The states are shown in order with the strongest margin for Clinton on the left, and the strongest margin for Trump on the right. The number after each state name is the number of electoral votes for that state. Trump's margin of victory was 74 electoral votes, meaning that half that number (37) electoral votes will need to move from Trump to the Democrat for Trump to lose in 2020. Based on this data, this would most easily happen with three states (Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin) moving from Trump to the Democrats. Without looking at any polls, I would estimate that this is a possibility. Trump won these states largely because of promises of manufacturing and mining jobs. While Trump did achieve a lot of economic growth and low unemployment before the pandemic started, the largest job growth was actually in healthcare and education. Mining and manufacturing actually continued to lose jobs. On the other hand, the Democrats have continued to blunder their way through the election, showing no signs of a winning strategy, and failing to identify galvanizing candidates. 

Gold, Copper, Natural Gas, Oil

Many people watching federal debt levels and Federal Reserve policy are bracing for inflation as far as the eye can see, but is the ‘buy gold’ mantra really the best way to go given the current situation? I compared one year of futures prices for gold, copper, oil, and natural gas. With gold near all-time-highs, and oil still far below last year’s prices, oil may have more upside potential. Moreover, I think there is strong political will for massive infrastructure spending, so a commodity that benefits from industrial activity is likely to perform well. I think there is a strong case for oil producers being the winners for the second half of 2020.

 

Multiples and Total Return for 33 Mega Cap Stocks

Multiples are a key part of fundamental analysis used in stock picking. There is some debate over which multiples are best, or whether any of them are really useful. I put data for seven multiples into a spreadsheet for 33 of the highest market cap stocks traded on US exchanges. (I attempted to analyze the highest market cap stocks, but a a few were excluded because incomplete data was available for them.) I obtained the multiple data on Sunday, November 10 (primarily from TD Ameritrade). I calculated the total return (including dividends) supposing someone bought at the opening price on November 11, 2019, and sold at the closing price on August 4, 2020. I then charted the results for each multiple. The results were not promising for people who use multiples to invest. The linear regressions should be expected to have negative slopes, but this was only the case for PEG ratio. In other words, companies with low earnings and low book values had better returns for investors. I think I'll check the returns after a full year before I start buying stock with the lowest earnings I can find. 

Percentage of Deaths Caused by Covid-19

I calculated the percentage of all deaths reported by the CDC that involved Covid-19. The data was last updated July 16. The total number of deaths is much lower for recent weeks because of a lag in processing of death certificates, but unless the lag for Covid-19 involved deaths is greater than deaths from other causes, the percentages still indicated that the pandemic (as measured by number of deaths) peaked in mid April and is now in decline. Reporting of surging infection rates is probably mostly a result of increased testing, but the discrepancy between number of infections and number of deaths is likely also due to improved treatments and the fact that new infections may be affecting healthier populations as compared to those infected in April.

Week    All Deaths  Deaths From  Percentage of Deaths Caused by

Ending  Involving   All Causes   Covid-19

        Covid-19
04/18/20   16928    76133        22.2%
04/25/20   15261    73060        20.9%
05/02/20   12997    68319        19.0%
05/09/20   10983    65572        16.7%
05/16/20    8972    62896        14.3%
05/23/20    6984    59608        11.7%
05/30/20    5921    56843        10.4%
06/06/20    4738    55281         8.6%
06/13/20    3863    53233         7.3%
06/20/20    3258    51142         6.4%
06/27/20    2501    46892         5.3%
07/04/20    1440    36602         3.9%
07/11/20     413    19408         2.1%