Sorrento Therapeutic’s COVID-19 Test

Posted on September 2, 2020 by admin

Sorrento’s COVID-19 test appears to be superior to competing diagnostics, and it just made a good acquisition, while its overall strategy is sound.

Sorrento has produced a coronavirus test which is expected to be approved and then become widely used in the U.S. and potentially around the world. The company requested emergency use authorization (EUA) from the Food and Drug Administration for its COVI-TRACK diagnostic test, which detects novel coronavirus antibodies. It also plans to file for an EUA for COVI-TRACE, a rapid salivary diagnostic test licensed from Columbia University.

Sorrento has been even more active in developing potential treatments for COVID-19. The biotech filed for FDA approval earlier this month to begin a phase 1 study of antibody therapy STI-1499 (COVI-GUARD) in treating hospitalized COVID-19 patients. It hopes to quickly advance the candidate through clinical testing and perhaps even receive an EUA for STI-1499 as soon as the end of 2020.

a number of test tubes and capsules are pictured under a cool blue light

Source: Shutterstock

Sorrento’s coronavirus test yields results in just 30 minutes, does not require lab equipment and doesn’t have to be sent to labs. As a result, it, unlike other tests, could be used by hospitals, stadiums, hotels, office buildings and other organizations to allow people to safely enter their facilities on the same day that the test is taken.

References:

Accumulating Wealth in the Stock Market

Posted on September 1, 2020 by admin

Updated: September 2, 2020

The stock market has been the primary reason for the diverging wealth gap. The logical solution is to get more Americans invested in the stock market.

According to Forbes, nine out of every 10 households with incomes over $100,000 own stocks. But sadly, most American’s don’t have any personal capital invested in stocks. Only 20% of households earning less than $40,000 own stocks. And research from the National Bureau of Economic Research shows almost two-thirds of investors have less than $10,000 in the stock market.

Fifty-five percent (55%) of Americans report that they participate in the stock market (own stocks), according to Gallop.

Furthermore, Gallup finds “relatively few Americans in lower-income households invested in stocks” and only 55% of Americans reported that they own stock, based on polls conducted in March and April of 2020. This is identical to the average 55% recorded in 2019 and similar to the average of 54% Gallup has measured since 2010.

In other words, the stock market’s exponential rise over the past decade has not helped most American families. In fact, “fewer Americans are benefiting from today’s bull market than did so in bull markets before the financial crisis.

The gains in stock values in recent years seem to have done little to persuade people who may have divested themselves of stocks to get back in the market” according to Gallup’s research. In fact, a recent survey by Betterment highlights this great misfortune. When asked how the stock market performed over the past decade, roughly half of those surveyed said the market had gone nowhere. Worse yet, a further 20% said they thought it fell!

Eighty-four percent (84%) of all stocks owned by Americans belong to the wealthiest 10 percent of households, according to NYU economist Edward N. Wolff.

The number of Americans who own stocks has plunged since 2000. But after a relentless 20-year decline, this trend is reversing. Thanks to commission-free trading led by Robinhood, all the major brokerages have seen millions of new investors flood into the market in 2020.

In short, millions of new investors are getting into stocks for the first time. And it’s a wonderful thing.

You will never accumulate wealth “Renting Out Your Time”

Working hard and saving money is necessary. But it’s often not sufficient. Ramit Sethi wisely points out in I Will Teach You To Be Rich:

“Because of inflation, you’re actually losing money every day your money is sitting in a bank account.”

Additionally, Robert Kiyosaki of Rich Dad, Poor Dad likes to say that:

“The rich get richer by continually reinvesting asset profits back into assets.”

Thus, as you may see, it is extremely important to make your money work for you. But, it appears that most people don’t know how to make their money work for them. But if you want to build massive wealth, you need to put your dollars to work.

And, you can put your dollars to work by owning a piece of a successful business—owning stocks—that is the main path to accumulating wealth that’s available to anybody.

It’s okay if you only have a little money to get started. These days it’s totally free to buy stocks through most big brokerages. And you can usually open an account with as little as $100.

Start by investing in a market index fund 🙂

The important thing regarding investing is to overcome the fear and break the inertia, and start investing. No more excuses. If you’re just getting started investing, first it is recommended that you buy a market index fund such as a S&P 500 Index mutual fund or exchange traded fund that owns a list of U.S. large cap stocks. That way you’ll own tiny fraction of hundreds of businesses.

An index is a list of companies…so when you buy S&P 500 index mutual fund or exchanged traded fund, you are buying an index that tracks the S&P 500. In fact, buying fund that tracks a market index is one of the best ways for beginner investors to get their feet wet in the stock market.

The S&P 500 is a stock market index that measures the performance of about 500 companies in the U.S. It includes companies across 11 sectors to offer a picture of the health of the U.S. stock market and the broader economy. This stock market index is viewed as a measure of how well the stock market is performing overall.

Additionally, index funds continue to outperform the vast majority of the actively managed funds in their asset classes. In the 15 calendar years ended last Dec. 31, the S&P 500 Index outperformed 90.5% of all actively managed U.S. large-cap funds, according to analysts at S&P. Among 13 specific asset classes, the percent of funds that under-performed their benchmark indexes were similar, ranging from a low of 81.4% for large-cap value funds to a high of 95.2% for mid-cap blend funds.

Focus on Asset Classes

Investors are increasingly focused on asset classes instead of individual stocks. The reasons are that asset classes are much less risky than individual stocks, without sacrificing anything in terms of expected return.

The experts teach that the expected return of one stock is the same as the expected return of the entire asset class of which that stock is a member.
Yet the risk of owning just one stock is huge: It could disappear (relatively unlikely) or go into massive free-fall for any of a variety of reasons. There’s very little risk of that happening with an asset class made up of hundreds of stocks.

References:

Dexamethasone – first drug shown to reduce Covid-19 deaths

Posted on August 30, 2020 by admin

The most severe symptoms of COVID-19 are the result of the an infected person’s immune system’s overreaction to the virus. Dexamethasone is an anti-inflammatory drug that can rein in a person’s immune system attack.

Dexamethasone is a corticosteroid that prevents the release of substances in the body that cause inflammation. It is used to treat many different inflammatory conditions such as allergic disorders and skin conditions.

Dexamethasone is also used to treat ulcerative colitis, arthritis, lupus, psoriasis, and breathing disorders. It may also be used for purposes not listed in this medication guide.

This drug is relatively inexpensive and widely available steroid that blunts many types of immune responses. Doctors have long used it to treat allergies, asthma and inflammation.

In June, it became the first drug shown to reduce Covid-19 deaths. That study of more than 6,000 people, which in July was published in the New England Journal of Medicine, found that dexamethasone reduced deaths by one-third in patients on ventilators, and by one-fifth in patients on oxygen. It may be less likely to help — and may even harm — patients who are at an earlier stage of Covid-19 infections, however.

In its Covid-19 treatment guidelines, the National Institutes of Health recommends only using dexamethasone in patients with COVID-19 who are on a ventilator or are receiving supplemental oxygen.

Steroid medication affects your immune system. You may get infections more easily. Steroids can also worsen or reactivate an infection you’ve already had. Tell your doctor about any illness or infection you have had within the past several weeks.

References:

U.S. Economy and Stock Markets are Highly Disconnected

Posted on August 29, 2020 by admin

“The stock market isn’t the economy. The economy is production and jobs, and there are shortfalls in virtually every sector of the economy.” -Janet Yellen, former Chair of the Federal Reserve

We remain in the midst of a global crisis as the impact of COVID-19 infections continues to spread. As a result, we are experiencing an income crisis for a wide swath of the working population. The labor market decline was most catastrophic on low-end age earners. Those jobs have been the slowest to recover and many of those jobs have been loss permanently.

financial markets reflect assessments of the value of assets today based on investors’ expectations for the cash those assets will generate.

The U.S. economy is highly consumer-driven according to economists; our Gross Domestic Product (GDP) levels are guided primarily by consumer spending. The “V-shaped” recovery in retail sales data has been a boon to the bull market narrative. There is, however, legitimate concern over the potential impact if the Congress and Executive branch are unable to hammer out a compromise on extended unemployment benefits.

Causes of the disconnect

“Financial markets reflect assessments of the value of assets today based on investors’ expectations for the cash those assets will generate.” Vanguard Investments

Hope-ism and federal intervention are buoying up the stock market. “Hope-ism” is the wishful thinking that makes investors believe that the economy will not only recover quickly, it will snap back with vigor as the virus is quickly vanquished.

Federal intervention has been stratospheric over the past decade plus. Coming into the pandemic, the Fed had injected $5 trillion in Quantitative Easing (QE) from the 2008 recession. Now it has added another $3 trillion in the first round of COVID-19 relief and will likely add at least another $2 trillion, bringing the total to a whopping $10 trillion.

The two, the U.S. economy and equity stock markets, will reconnect again. Either the economy will recover, as the stock market predicts, or the stock market will reprice and crash. In the following we discuss the causes of the disconnect and what investors should be concerned about as the disconnect corrects.

Investors should expect a stock market correction. Greed will give way to fear. FOMO (fear of missing out) will become FOLO (fear of losing out). Also, there are plenty of other threats to the economy and stock market including a global debt crisis, cyber crime and terrorism, trade wars and socioeconomic unrest.

References:

Abbott Laboratories 15-minute COVID-19 test…a Game Changer

Posted on August 27, 2020 by admin

Abbott Labs receives FDA emergency use authorization for their 15-minute, $5 COVID-19 test

The FDA has granted emergency use authorization to Abbott Laboratories for the company’s BinaxNOW, a 15-minute COVID-19 test that will be priced at $5.

Abbott says BinaxNOW works without relying on lab equipment – at a time when labs can take as long as two weeks to produce results – and uses a nasal swab and a small reactive card that can be administered by a range of healthcare workers, including pharmacists.

BinaxNOW is an antigen test, the size of a credit card, with no equipment required and results delivered in 15 minutes, using proven lateral flow technology. It lets trained healthcare providers test a lot of people for active infections, a lot faster, on a single-use test.

Rapid antigen tests perform well while eliminating the waiting game. While lab tests have the highest sensitivity, you have the trade-off of not knowing results for several days and the risk of infecting others. Rapid tests deliver actionable results quickly so that infected patients can immediately begin self-quarantine. This test, along with others like it, is risk reduction on a community scale.

BinaxNOW is also transformative in Abbott Lab’s ability to produce it in large volumes, which is what the country needs more than anything today.

The company plans to ship “tens of millions’ of test in September, ramping to 50M tests per month by the end of October. The new test “can be used at a massive scale to help overcome the current waiting game for test results,” according to John Hackett, divisional VP of applied research and technology at Abbott Diagnostics.

Abbott Labs is pairing BinaxNOW rapid test with a mobile app, called NAVICA^™, which works like a secure digital “boarding pass” that can be scanned to enter organizations and other places where people gather. This combination of rapid test and mobile app stands as game-changing technology.

References:

Doc Rivers

Posted on August 27, 2020 by admin

Doc Rivers, Head Coach, NBA Los Angeles Clippers, expressing frustration and anger regarding the shooting in the back of Jacob Blake by a police officer in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

Additionally, Kenosha police officers, sworn to “serve and protect”, take no action to stop a white militia group member vigilante with a long gun who kills two protesters and wounds a third.

Small Businesses Are Dying by the Thousand | Bloomberg

Posted on August 25, 2020 by admin

“Small Businesses Are Dying by the Thousands — And No One Is Tracking the Carnage”

By Madeleine Ngo, August 11, 2020, 9:08 AM EDT

They simply close down and never show up in bankruptcy tallies
More than half of owners are worried their firm won’t survive

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted virtually all businesses in one way or another. But the divide between small businesses and large organizations has never been clearer. “Big companies are going bankrupt at a record pace, but that’s only part of the carnage. By some accounts, small businesses are disappearing by the thousands amid the COVID-19 pandemic, and the drag on the economy from these failures could be huge.”

Massive corporations have the cash and/or borrowing power to stay afloat for many months, the majority of small businesses do not. And we’re beginning to feel the effects. Economists project that more than 100,000 American small businesses have already shut down permanently since March. This suggests that at least 2 percent of all small businesses are now gone (never to return). And this is just the very tip of the iceberg.

According to a separate study that was conducted in April, as many as 7.5 million small businesses will be permanently shut down if business disruptions continue unabated. More than 90 percent of them will be companies with fewer than 20 employees.

“This wave of silent failures goes uncounted in part because real-time data on small business is notoriously scarce, and because owners of small firms often have no debt, and thus no need for bankruptcy court.”

“Yelp Inc., the online reviewer, has data showing more than 80,000 small businesses permanently shuttered from March 1 to July 25. About 60,000 were local businesses, or firms with fewer than five locations.”

Small businesses are the backbone of the American economy.

“While the businesses are small individually, the collective impact of their failures could be substantial. Firms with fewer than 500 employees account for about 44% of U.S. economic activity, according to a U.S. Small Business Administration report, and they employ almost half of all American workers.”

“Small business attrition is high even in normal times. Only about half of all establishments survive for at least five years, according to the SBA. But the swiftness of the pandemic and the huge drop in economic activity is hitting hard among typically upbeat entrepreneurs. About 58% of small business owners say they’re worried about permanently closing, according to a July U.S. Chamber of Commerce survey.”

References:

U.S. FDA Approves COVID-19 Plasma Treatment for Emergency Use Authorization

Posted on August 24, 2020 by admin

Eradicating the coronavirus, whether it’s through an effective therapeutic treatment or vaccine, is the key to unlocking the economy.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s granted emergency use authorization of antibody-rich plasma from recovered patients which may lessen the severity of the disease, but experts suggest further research is needed.

Convalescent plasma therapy is an experimental treatment that some physicians are using for people with severe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). The plasma therapy has shown some promise in battling severe illness. People who’ve recovered from COVID-19 have antibodies — proteins the body uses to fight off infections — to the disease in their blood. The blood from people who’ve recovered is called convalescent plasma.

Researchers hope that convalescent plasma can be given to people with severe COVID-19 to boost their ability to fight the virus. It also might help keep people who are moderately ill from becoming more ill and experiencing COVID-19 complications, according to the Mayo Clinic.

Alex Azar, the U.S. health and human services secretary, said during a White House press briefing on Sunday that the treatment has been delivered to more than 70,000 American patients so far. The treatment, according to the FDA’s evaluation, “may be effective in lessening the severity or shortening the length of COVID-19 illness in some hospitalized patients.”

Source: The New York Times Coronavirus Vaccine Tracker

Over 400 vaccines and therapietic treatments are under study as researchers rush to produce effective medicines for the disease. And, 32 of the vaccines are in human trials. The FDA says that for any vaccine to be approved, it will need to prevent infection or decrease its severity in at least 50% of the people vaccinated. The goal is to inoculate enough people with a vaccine that immunity spreads through a community, even if not everyone gets the vaccine. It’s called “herd immunity”, according to WebMD.

For this coronavirus, some experts say about 60% to 70% of the population would need to develop antibodies, whether from a vaccine or getting and recovering from COVID-19, to create herd immunity.

Currently, the most effective ways to protect yourself and others from being infected by the virus are to:

Clean your hands frequently and thoroughly
Avoid touching your eyes, mouth, and nose
Cover your cough with the bend of elbow or tissue
Stay home and isolate yourself if you feel ill or ‘under-the-weather’
Maintain social physical distance of at least 6 feet from others

Wearing a mask or face covering is no substitute for these additional effective measures.

References:

Federal Debt has Surpassed the Size of the U.S. Economy | New York Times

Posted on August 23, 2020 by admin

By Matt Phillips. Aug. 21, 2020 Updated 7:48 a.m. ET

The national debt of the United States now exceeds the size of the nation’s gross domestic product. That was once considered by economists a doomsday scenario that would wreck the U.S. economy. So far, that hasn’t happened.

“Economists and deficit hawks have warned for decades that the United States was borrowing too much money. The federal debt was ballooning so fast, they said, that economic ruin was inevitable: Interest rates would skyrocket, taxes would rise and inflation would probably run wild.”

“The death spiral could be triggered once the debt surpassed the size of the U.S. economy — a turning point that was probably still years in the future.”

“It actually happened much sooner: sometime before the end of June 2020.”

“”This is a 40-year pattern,” said Stephanie Kelton, a professor of economics and public policy at Stony Brook University and a proponent of what’s often called Modern Monetary Theory. That view holds that countries that control their own currencies have far more leeway to run large deficits than traditionally thought. “The whole premise that deficits drive up interest rates, it’s just wrong,” she said.”

“At the end of last year, the United States was about $17 trillion in debt — roughly 80 percent of the gross domestic product. In January, government analysts predicted that debt would approach 100 percent of the G.D.P. around 2030. But by the end of June, the debt stood at $20.63 trillion, or roughly 106 percent of G.D.P., which shrank amid widespread stay-at-home orders. (These numbers don’t count trillions more the government owes itself in bonds held by the Social Security and Medicare trust funds.)”

“Economists have long told a story in which debt levels this large inevitably ignited an economic doom loop. Towering levels of debt would freak out Treasury bond investors, who would demand higher interest rates to hand their cash to such a heavily indebted borrower. With its debt payments more expensive, the government would have to borrow even more to stay current on its obligations.”

“Neither tax increases nor spending cuts would be attractive, because both could slow the economy — and any slowdown would hurt tax revenues, meaning the government would have to keep borrowing more. These scenarios frequently included dire predictions of soaring interest rates for business and consumer borrowing and crushing inflation as the government printed more and more money to pay what it owed.”

“But instead of panicking, the financial markets are viewing this seemingly bottomless need for borrowing benignly. The interest rate on the 10-year Treasury note — also known as its yield — is roughly 0.7 percent, far below where it was a little over a year ago, when it was about 2 percent.”

“There’s a debate about whether a large amount of government debt hamstrings economic growth over the long term. Some influential studies have shown that high levels of debt — in particular debt-to-G.D.P. ratios approaching 100 percent — are associated with lower levels of economic growth. But other researchers have found that the relationship isn’t causal: Slowing economic growth might lead to higher levels of debt, rather than vice versa.”

“Others have found that they don’t see much of a relationship between high levels of debt and slow economic growth for rich developed countries.”

“The experience over the last decade has drastically shifted the way economists and investors think about how the United States funds itself.”

Brownlee Global: Gratitude to Greatness

Gratitude is a Powerful Tool That Can Help People Live the Lives They Want

Author Archives: admin

Sorrento Therapeutic’s COVID-19 Test

Sorrento’s COVID-19 test appears to be superior to competing diagnostics, and it just made a good acquisition, while its overall strategy is sound.

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Accumulating Wealth in the Stock Market

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Dexamethasone – first drug shown to reduce Covid-19 deaths

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U.S. Economy and Stock Markets are Highly Disconnected

Causes of the disconnect

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Abbott Laboratories 15-minute COVID-19 test…a Game Changer

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Doc Rivers

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Small Businesses Are Dying by the Thousand | Bloomberg

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U.S. FDA Approves COVID-19 Plasma Treatment for Emergency Use Authorization

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Federal Debt has Surpassed the Size of the U.S. Economy | New York Times

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