Thursday December 17, 2020 (8 days til Christmas)
Election Day -44
35 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021
This is a follow up to my “Do Me Another Favor” screed, which was about investing.
In it I implored you to invest, and I suggested that you do it before today, Thursday, when the FDA is scheduled to meet about the next Covid vaccine from a company called Moderna.
If you have invested this week in Moderna you will have watched your investment decline precipitously, which can lead directly to that, “Oh shit what did I do?” experience. (Maybe even, “Rick’s an idiot. I’ll never listen to him again.” Thought.)
But let me say this. If you invested this week, congratulations, you took the first step. If you watched your investment go down then as Jeff Goldblum said in the movie, “The Big Chill,” you need a rationalization. (Okay that’s not exactly what he said so I didn’t put it in quotes. I believe he said, “you can do without sex, but you can’t do without a rationalization every day.” Nah, that’s not quite it either.)
I will say this about buying stocks – it is not a rational process. I will also say this – it is a rational process. If you bought a stock and it goes up then it’s a rational process. You can feel confident, walk with your back a bit straighter, and feel like a titan of industry, or something like that. If the stock goes down, you can question your very being. Wonder what is wrong with yourself and desperately think of an excuse, or at least someone to blame for your foolishness.
I think the fact that the Moderna stock (MRNA) went down illustrates for me the best metaphor I have about investing in stocks. It comes from Peter Lynch, legendary investor of the Magellan Fund. He said investing in the stock market was like accompanying your crazy aunt across the street and she stops midway to yell at the traffic.
So why did it go down? It seems there was a meeting of the FDA on Tuesday about Moderna. Not exactly sure what that meeting was, because the one I am anticipating is today. However, at that time Dr. Fauci was asked about the long term effects and safety of this sort of vaccine. He said something along the lines of “We really don’t know.” That was enough to send the stock spiraling downward.
I will say this. And here comes my rationalization. In three to five years you will be glad you owned stock in companies that do mRNA work, like Moderna.
Not bad, huh?
If you bought some Moderna I urge you to be curious. To ask why, and what happened? Also, to look into mRNA research.
There are a lot of new technologies in biology and technology, which are just coming to fruition. Learning about them, and being aware of them is interesting and exciting. As far as timing goes, there are two numbers I have heard being tossed about 42 days, and 17 years.
The 42 days is how long it took Moderna to develop its vaccine, once it got the Covid DNA mapping from the Chinese. Seventeen years is how long people have been studying this stuff.
If we go back seventeen years, that is 2003, and about the time that George W. Bush and the Christian Right were trying to stop stem cell research. It is stem cell research, which, I believe, played a pivotal role in developing this technology.
If you haven’t invested in Moderna or any of the Covid vaccine stocks I would urge you to keep watching them and decide to make an investment in them at some point. If you are already invested you have, I think, three choices: Stay in, Get out, Get partially out (for now).
Here’s the tricky part. The stock is going down. When will it hit bottom and start coming back up? Most investors say you can’t time the stock market and I think they are right. Motley Fool says you are better off having a strategy to invest consistently over time and you will hit the lows, but you won’t miss the highs. I think that is a good way to look at it.
I will say this about investing. You are better off doing it than not.
That is all. Carry on. I will, keep you informed.
PS The Joel Osteen Inspirational Cube at Walmart! Press to listen. 365 Inspirations, 52 Sermons. 39 bucks. These are Joel’s greatest inspirations (according writing on the box.)
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