Coronavirus Updates, Important Information, and Ancedotal Experience

karma · Apr 15, 2020

One of the things that I find most frustrating about all this from a small business point of view (my point of view, and mine alone I know) is that the govt can order me to shut down, tell me I need to not fire/layoff employees (we weren't anyways) offer us a potentially free pot of money (which is nice, and a solid help), and then recognize that it probably needs to be more. However, at no point in time do they ever say hey, you know, in the middle of not making any money, the quarterly/monthly taxes, MIGHT actually be a significant burden and may make it harder to keep those employees around. This big chunk of money COULD be used to help weather this storm. Go ahead and keep it for now, in a few months we will figure out where to go. No, those mother fuckers are like, we dont give a fuck how bad things are, or that you cant make any money. PAY US MOTHERFUCKER or we WILL start proceedings to ruin your shit.

First and foremost, the govt will be sure it gets theirs. Even if it is their incompetence that got us here.

Fucker · Apr 15, 2020

karma said:
First and foremost, the govt will be sure it gets theirs. Even if it is their incompetence that got us here.

First and foremost, Wall Street gets theirs...then the government. Wall St already got their cash. In fact, the CEO of Goldman gave himself a fat raise and ordered two new jets.

karma · Apr 15, 2020

Fucker said:
First and foremost, Wall Street gets theirs...then the government. Wall St already got their cash. In fact, the CEO of Goldman gave himself a fat raise and ordered two new jets.

True enough, I just sort of lumped that all together in one giant thing. The govt used tax dollars (and the inflation yet to come from printing money faster than the makers of Monopoly which will be shouldered by the tax payer) to give Wall Street theirs so I just sorta lumped it all in there.

eXarc · Apr 15, 2020

Fucker said:
First and foremost, Wall Street gets theirs...then the government. Wall St already got their cash. In fact, the CEO of Goldman gave himself a fat raise and ordered two new jets.

What’s fucked up is I would’ve made money, exponentially more money, trading on the market during all this if I had the initial capital. I’m not even mad about it, I don’t give a fuck anymore. Can’t beat em, join em.

edit: I had TVIX way early, at around $55 and bought in again at ~$120. Sold 50% at $300 and bought in once more around $330 based on some news at the time and the crazy spike potential in market volatility. Rode to $700 and sold there, not far from the high (I think it ended up being around $880) for a massive multi six figure profit. Paper trading account. I had puts on RCL, CCL early on like I said when I was watching this shit in early February. Later on Z, CMG, DRI, SPCE, LYV and not to mention the endless amount of SPY plays. Fucking wear a blindfold and toss a dart into the market and you could’ve made money early on in this fiasco. Fucking ridiculous looking back and it even seemed ridiculous then, too.

karma · Apr 15, 2020

eXarc said:
What’s fucked up is I would’ve made money, exponentially more money, trading on the market during all this if I had the initial capital. I’m not even mad about it, I don’t give a fuck anymore. Can’t beat em, join em.

I started day trading in mid january (tiny account), I have mostly just been riding the dips and spikes on disney, intel, amd, cruise lines and things like that with small positions since this started. If I was better at it, and had more money I would be raking it in and thats before you account for the bio/pharm stuff people are making money on day trading right now.

Khane · Apr 15, 2020

Where's Tuco to tell all the people who've lost their livelihoods that we are "kicking the shit out of this thing"!

eXarc · Apr 15, 2020

karma said:
I started day trading in mid january (tiny account), I have mostly just been riding the dips and spikes on disney, intel, amd, cruise lines and things like that with small positions since this started. If I was better at it, and had more money I would be raking it in and thats before you account for the bio/pharm stuff people are making money on day trading right now.

Are you just using the term day trading but mean swing trading or the like? I thought being able to day trade without being marked as PDT required a minimum of $25,000 equity in the trading account at all times to be able to day trade more than 3x a week? If so, maybe your version of a tiny account and my version are vastly different! Lmao. I’m not hating if so, just curious. What broker are you using? I’m on ToS.
Grats on the plays. Pulling profit in the market is still worthy of praise at a time like this, don’t beat yourself up for not making more. Everyone could’ve always potentially made more money, it’s not losing it all that really counts. Like you said, practice and getting better and building confidence towards better moves. I feel you man. I’d be sitting pretty right now if I even had a fraction of what my paper money account did. Even if I didn’t start with 200k and didn’t play quite as risky as I did with paper money, I’d still be extremely well off compared to my current situation.

karma · Apr 15, 2020

I am doing a little of all of it. Swing trading (sometimes I will hold things for a few days. Held disney from 93 to 107 not too long ago) and day trading (buy something, let it run for a bit-I usually try to get 10% or so back from it) and sell, usually in the same day, hopefully in the same hour, occasionally in the same 5 minutes!). Descriptions I used are more so you know what I am referring to in case I use the wrong terms!

I am using a cash account in ToS at the moment. I basically have unlimited day trades as long as I am using settled funds (trade+2 days). I divided my account up so I am not using more than a quarter of it a day (and some days I dont use that, i'm pretty conservative on my choices). If I use my days allowance and I am having a good day, I may keep trading, and just not trade a day or two after that while funds settle. If I dont like how things are panning out that day, or cant find anything I feel good about, I find other shit to do.

eXarc · Apr 15, 2020

karma said:
I am doing a little of all of it. Swing trading (sometimes I will hold things for a few days. Held disney from 93 to 107 not too long ago) and day trading (buy something, let it run for a bit-I usually try to get 10% or so back from it) and sell, usually in the same day, hopefully in the same hour, occasionally in the same 5 minutes!). Descriptions I used are more so you know what I am referring to in case I use the wrong terms!

I am using a cash account in ToS at the moment. I basically have unlimited day trades as long as I am using settled funds (trade+2 days). I divided my account up so I am not using more than a quarter of it a day (and some days I dont use that, i'm pretty conservative on my choices). If I use my days allowance and I am having a good day, I may keep trading, and just not trade a day or two after that while funds settle. If I dont like how things are panning out that day, or cant find anything I feel good about, I find other shit to do.

Ah, gotcha. I forgot about the timer on settled funds and stuff as well. Solid approach man and I would do very similar. It sounds like you are a disciplined person and that is something I pride myself on. It will definitely serve you well as far as trading is concerned. Good luck on the future plays!

sorry for the derail Mods

karma · Apr 15, 2020

eXarc said:
Ah, gotcha. I forgot about the timer on settled funds and stuff as well. Solid approach man and I would do very similar. It sounds like you are a disciplined person and that is something I pride myself on. It will definitely serve you well as far as trading is concerned. Good luck on the future plays!

sorry for the derail Mods

Thanks much! and yes, sorry for the derail!

Sanrith Descartes · Apr 15, 2020

karma said:
One of the things that I find most frustrating about all this from a small business point of view (my point of view, and mine alone I know) is that the govt can order me to shut down, tell me I need to not fire/layoff employees (we weren't anyways) offer us a potentially free pot of money (which is nice, and a solid help), and then recognize that it probably needs to be more. However, at no point in time do they ever say hey, you know, in the middle of not making any money, the quarterly/monthly taxes, MIGHT actually be a significant burden and may make it harder to keep those employees around. This big chunk of money COULD be used to help weather this storm. Go ahead and keep it for now, in a few months we will figure out where to go. No, those mother fuckers are like, we dont give a fuck how bad things are, or that you cant make any money. PAY US MOTHERFUCKER or we WILL start proceedings to ruin your shit.

First and foremost, the govt will be sure it gets theirs. Even if it is their incompetence that got us here.

To be clear, the govt can't order you to shutdown your business without due process of law. That being said, with courts basically closed and the excuse of a pandemic, govt overreach is at an all time high. Without courts, there is no remedy. It will get resolved, i am certain at some point this is going to get before the courts.

That being said, lots of businesses are just ignoring it depending on what state you are in. If you arent arrested or fined, then you actually haven't been damaged and thus have no standing. This is the real trick the govts are playing. They are banking on the vast majority just complying.

Note I am not a lawyer. I am a small business owner. There is actual precedent for public safety > civil rights. But there are a lot of unanswered questions and only the courts are going to be able to sort this out. For now though without the courts to provide relief, everyone is fucked. Welcome to a tiny little taste of authoritarianism.

eXarc · Apr 15, 2020

Sanrith Descartes said:
To be clear, the govt can't order you to shutdown your business without due process of law. That being said, with courts basically closed and the excuse of a pandemic, govt overreach is at an all time high. Without courts, there is no remedy. It will get resolved, i am certain at some point this is going to get before the courts.

That being said, lots of businesses are just ignoring it depending on what state you are in. If you arent arrested or fined, then you actually haven't been damaged and thus have no standing. This is the real trick the govts are playing. They are banking on the vast majority just complying.

Note I am not a lawyer. I am a small business owner. There is actual precedent for public safety > civil rights. But there are a lot of unanswered questions and only the courts are going to be able to sort this out. For now though without the courts to provide relief, everyone is fucked. Welcome to a tiny little taste of authoritarianism.

Therein lies the problem. Catch 22. Comply and funnel money down the drain, or don't, and maybe hopefully see some recourse at some point, and thats if everything goes your way. I feel for all you guys that are small business owners. Fortunately the owner of the restaraunt I work for has multiple profitable locations as well as several other businesses and holdings that allow them to remain solvent throughout this scenario. They've also been around for quite a while and he's an OG immigrant who knows how to make money and keep it. I can't imagine what a lot of small business owners are going through that are young or in the infancy stages. There are so many restaurants in my area that are never going to open their doors back up and completely fucked everyone working for them for good. Not that it's their fault, just saying that everyone involved got fucked. To be fair, I live in Louisiana, where there are literally 15 restaraunts on any given block of any given street, and we already had a saturated market before this shit happened. That's just one industry though. I really can't fathom the damage this has done in reality, at scale. It's hard to perceive in it's current state and I'm wondering what it's going to look like a couple months from now.

To those of you who own small businesses, are any of you qualifying for government funded assistance? I read about some businesses qualifying for loans upwards of $2 million dollars for 'small businesses', etc. Have any of you been eligible for that and what has the process been like? What industry are you guys in and what's your outlook on recovery for the rest of the year? How has it affected your personal finances?

karma · Apr 15, 2020

Sanrith Descartes said:
To be clear, the govt can't order you to shutdown your business without due process of law. That being said, with courts basically closed and the excuse of a pandemic, govt overreach is at an all time high. Without courts, there is no remedy. It will get resolved, i am certain at some point this is going to get before the courts.

That being said, lots of businesses are just ignoring it depending on what state you are in. If you arent arrested or fined, then you actually haven't been damaged and thus have no standing. This is the real trick the govts are playing. They are banking on the vast majority just complying.

Note I am not a lawyer. I am a small business owner. There is actual precedent for public safety > civil rights. But there are a lot of unanswered questions and only the courts are going to be able to sort this out. For now though without the courts to provide relief, everyone is fucked. Welcome to a tiny little taste of authoritarianism.

We are considered "essential" (I keep using "we" and "I" mostly I mean my wife's business that I do some work for) so the shut down part wasn't a huge issue for us, but I have quite a few friends in non essential businesses who are more than a little worried right now, and there is an entire country full of people in the same boat.

My point was more about the complete lack of any sort of state or federal agencies willing to discuss putting what WE owe THEM on hold while we all deal with this. Those same agencies are quick to tell landlords and other business (but not banks!) that they should be prepared to put getting paid on hold. Hypocrites the lot of them.

The govt extended income tax payments due down the road, but so far nothing I have seen or heard so far has led me to believe they(fed OR local govts) would be willing to delay tax payments business have to make. It would certainly make making payroll easier!

Having said all of that, we had savings, and saw this coming far enough out we can weather a few months of this, it goes on much longer and well... We did apply for a few bucks in the PPP, but havent heard anything yet. If we get it, it gives us more time, and a better chance of a smoother time down the road if business takes time to pick up.

Cutlery · Apr 15, 2020

Rule #1 of being fucking poor - utilities will always wait a month. At least. Sometimes more if you have a cold weather rule in place.

I've missed sporadic utility payments for legitimate reasons over the years - sometimes I slipped a digit typing in payment information, sometimes I thought I paid it and didn't, sometimes I paid the wrong invoice, etc. Nothing has ever gotten shut off. Hell, my gas bill didn't get paid for 5 months during the SUMMER once because the ex and I were going thru a divorce, and all I did was pay the DISCONNECTION NOTICE bill once it got there and everything has been good. Utility bills don't go on your credit report, they're the perfect thing to save until last. Never ever, ever prioritize them over rent or food. The electricity to your apartment doesn't matter if you don't have an apartment. The gas stove doesn't matter if you don't have anything to cook on it.

#2 - hospital/doctor bills - generally around here, if you pay ANYTHING at all on your hospital bills, they never go into collections. Same shit here - I had my kid go into the hospital right before the divorce, and me paying $50 a month on the $1300 bill kept it outta collections and them outta my hair until I was stable enough to pay it off.

#3 - sign up for WiC. You have a baby. Your wife was just pregnant. WIC will buy you a fuckton of groceries for those 2. You can live off bread for a LONG time. You also make under the threshold for qualifying for it. Well, YOU don't qualify for it, but the wife and kid will, and they'll buy them a lot of cereal, juice, milk, formula and shit like that.

Written by a guy who had a kid in august of 2001 and decided to take a voluntary layoff a few days before a couple of dickheads flew some planes into some buildings in NY. In 2002, we made under 19k between the 2 of us. I've been fucking POOR, and came out of it okay.

Quineloe · Apr 15, 2020

Sweden is being targeted for their handling of this, people claiming they're killing their population better than we are.

So I was a bit surprised, because I didn't see Sweden on the death list without scrolling. It's a small country, 1000 deaths, but really, they're doing this poorly? Then I noticed the big three graveyards aren't even on that chart. While Italy, France and Spain are all considerably more populated than Sweden, it's not enough to make up for the difference. They were excluded when this chart was made. For a clear purpose.
So I found the website and made the chart again.

Oh look at that. It's to make Sweden look bad. And that just doesn't work with the chart selections I've made.

I understand less than nothing about this whole virus and I don't know what the right thing to do is, but what really grinds my gears is when people omit data to get a point across that just wouldn't fly if they had been honest.

btw this is the site if you wanna play around

COVID-19 Data Explorer

Explore global data on COVID-19.

ourworldindata.org

Sanrith Descartes · Apr 15, 2020

karma said:
We are considered "essential" (I keep using "we" and "I" mostly I mean my wife's business that I do some work for) so the shut down part wasn't a huge issue for us, but I have quite a few friends in non essential businesses who are more than a little worried right now, and there is an entire country full of people in the same boat.

My point was more about the complete lack of any sort of state or federal agencies willing to discuss putting what WE owe THEM on hold while we all deal with this. Those same agencies are quick to tell landlords and other business (but not banks!) that they should be prepared to put getting paid on hold. Hypocrites the lot of them.

The govt extended income tax payments due down the road, but so far nothing I have seen or heard so far has led me to believe they(fed OR local govts) would be willing to delay tax payments business have to make. It would certainly make making payroll easier!

Having said all of that, we had savings, and saw this coming far enough out we can weather a few months of this, it goes on much longer and well... We did apply for a few bucks in the PPP, but havent heard anything yet. If we get it, it gives us more time, and a better chance of a smoother time down the road if business takes time to pick up.

Yeah this fucking is strictly a 1-way street. Notice they are stopping evictions for non-payment but not delaying property tax collections. This is big behind the curtain reveal with politics. The politicians keep driving the party divide to distract everyone from the truth which is both parties are full of pieces of shit. Its not about party. Its about power. Dem and GOP.

eXarc · Apr 15, 2020

Cutlery said:
Rule #1 of being fucking poor - utilities will always wait a month. At least. Sometimes more if you have a cold weather rule in place.

I've missed sporadic utility payments for legitimate reasons over the years - sometimes I slipped a digit typing in payment information, sometimes I thought I paid it and didn't, sometimes I paid the wrong invoice, etc. Nothing has ever gotten shut off. Hell, my gas bill didn't get paid for 5 months during the SUMMER once because the ex and I were going thru a divorce, and all I did was pay the DISCONNECTION NOTICE bill once it got there and everything has been good. Utility bills don't go on your credit report, they're the perfect thing to save until last. Never ever, ever prioritize them over rent or food. The electricity to your apartment doesn't matter if you don't have an apartment. The gas stove doesn't matter if you don't have anything to cook on it.

#2 - hospital/doctor bills - generally around here, if you pay ANYTHING at all on your hospital bills, they never go into collections. Same shit here - I had my kid go into the hospital right before the divorce, and me paying $50 a month on the $1300 bill kept it outta collections and them outta my hair until I was stable enough to pay it off.

#3 - sign up for WiC. You have a baby. Your wife was just pregnant. WIC will buy you a fuckton of groceries for those 2. You can live off bread for a LONG time. You also make under the threshold for qualifying for it. Well, YOU don't qualify for it, but the wife and kid will, and they'll buy them a lot of cereal, juice, milk, formula and shit like that.

Written by a guy who had a kid in august of 2001 and decided to take a voluntary layoff a few days before a couple of dickheads flew some planes into some buildings in NY. In 2002, we made under 19k between the 2 of us. I've been fucking POOR, and came out of it okay.

Internally, I know this and knew it at the time. I don't know why I fucking thought it was a good idea. At the moment, something about not wanting to double up or triple up on utility payments down the road. Which is somewhat sound logically, assuming I had an influx of cash sooner than I did. That was my mistake and its a lesson learned. I have been in situations before where I had to choose between paying an electric bill or buying food or paying X whatever and knew I could put aside utility payments for a while because they are by far the most lenient. Anyway, it just solidifies the lesson and all but none of that was really the point of my post. I could have done better in many ways, and I don't deny that. I just have a major issue with the response and other things in the government at the moment.

I make minimum payments on medical debt when necessary and my situation is vastly more complex than that, but I really don't want to get into it. It's expensive but yes, it can be manageable.

My wife is already signed up for WiC and is in the process of getting all of that setup. Everything has been delayed because of the current situation. We didnt know about it until a while ago (like a month or two ago), but she signed up as soon as we found out about it.

Appreciate the insight and shared experience, it's good advice.

BrutulTM · Apr 15, 2020

Fucker said:
I've seen a few train wrecks in my time...don't feel too bad. A couple I knew had a small house, lived in it for a while, sold it at a small profit. The wife got a small inheritance. Total was around $60k. Instead of using that on a down payment for a larger house, they BLEW it in 6 months and had nothing to show for it.

Some people see a pile of cash for the first time and lose their damn minds. When I was in college one of the janitors where I worked won $25K from powerball and immediately quit his job and bought a new car. I was only 19 at the time but even I was like "Dude, you're not rich, after taxes that $25K doesn't even pay for the car." Didn't hear how that ended but I bet 6 months later he was probably in debt more than he was before "winning the lottery" and back to mopping floors and scrubbing toilets.

Sanrith Descartes · Apr 15, 2020

Just got the closing docs for our Paycheck Protection Loan. Making payroll just got easier for a few months.

slippery · Apr 15, 2020

Sanrith Descartes said:
Just got the closing docs for our Paycheck Protection Loan. Making payroll just got easier for a few months.

It looks like ours is coming through as well. Bank says probably early next week we actually get the money. Definitely takes some of the stress off, and frees up money to buy product.

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