Notes From All Over, Part 2 -- February 4, 2020

One needs to ask: what's driving the market? The Dow is up 450 points in early morning trading.  TSLA is up $126, up 16%, now trading at $906/share. AAPL up $6, at $314. Okay. That's all I'm going to look at for now. [Later: AAPL up $9.76; up 3.15%; trading at $318, but well below it's 52-week high, of 328.]

Positive news re: 2019-nCoV. Most Chinese hospitalized with this virus are going home. Mortality rate of 2% well below SARS and well below mortality rate of 6 - 7% for "seasonal flu" in the US.

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All over? This past week I mentioned two things regarding the 2019-nCoV:

• US corporate world sees this thing ending by March, 2020
• we will know the pandemic scare has reached its peak when the stock market surges

Today, the Dow is up almost 450 points in early trading.

Could be a "dead cat" bounce. If so, blame it on 2019-nCoV pneumonia.

Iowa Democrat caucus glitch? What better way to slow down Bernie's momentum? This has Hillary's fingerprints all over it. And that's now being reported by others, including The Washington Post, Fox News, and The Washington Examiner.  I knew she would do it, I just did not know how. Wow, wait 'til the Bernie supporters hear this. Others say it was Buttigieg, who has already claimed victory in Iowa and has moved on.

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Cancer

We've spent, what, trillions of dollars on fighting cancer?

In the big scheme of things there have been some real successes.

But in the big scheme of things, it certainly doesn't appear we're getting much in return for how much has been spent. 

Man on the moon and safely back before the end of the decade.

The Manhattan project to end WWII.

Cracking the DNA code by a couple of Cambridge labs in less than a couple of years (one can quibble about the actual amount of time).