I assume the astronauts and everyone involved is tested daily for COVID-19. I am sure that bringing the virus to the IIS would be disastrous. Anyone has any insights on the measures taken to prevent it?
This Verge article[0] appears to describe the preventative steps to be less severe than I'd expect.
[0] https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/25/21264868/spacex-nasa-laun...
Ever since one of the astronauts got sick on one of the Gemini missions the astronauts have undergone quarantines for a period before going up into space.
And still Ken Mattingly was pulled from Apollo 13 3 days before takeoff because of a potential exposure to measles.
In the live video, most of the technicians and even Musk are wearing masks, most of them staying at some distance though. I doubt they were all quarantined for the last 2 weeks.
Why should it be desastrous? I hope you do know the odds.
The COVID-19 fatality odd is 0.3%, the Dragon-lost odd probably much higher, maybe at around 5%. The Falcon 9 has over 80 starts now, but this is only the 3nd Dragon 2 start, and one of it failed.
I think the astronauts health makes them much less likely to die from Corona than 0.3% but exposing the current crew of the IIS does not sound like a good idea either.
Fatality rate is one thing, but being in a small space can cause high concentrations of virus and any health complication in space is a big deal.
A catastrophic failure is definitely a risk, but not sure how its magnitude should diminish our caution when it comes to bringing the virus to the space station (by your calc, it lowers the risk only by 5%).
3x levered nasdaq 100 would give you an annual volatility of at least 30-50%, occasionally much much higher. The crazy thing is that medallion presumably achieved this with a very small volatility and no significant drawdowns. Nasdaq 100 was down -42% in 2008, so levered 3x you would be out of business.
Incidentally this also means that if you buy the etf on day 1 and the underlying is at 100, on day 2 the underlying falls to 99 then on day 3 goes back to 100 then you would be left with less than 100% of what you started with (assuming perfect tracking and no fees).
According to my models there are very few market environments in which you would make less money with a leverage ratio of 2.5x. In order maximize return your leverage should be:
Expected Return/Expected Variance
For example even if the expected return is 1% and the vol 5%, the ideal leverage ratio for maximizing return is 4x!
In short, a 2-3x leveraged ETF is an excellent investment and should outperform the index in almost all market conditions. It’s when your leverage ratio goes over 5x that you start to have major problems a lot of the time.
I can appreciate this, but the fund decay actually has nothing to do with leverage.
All "leveraged" ETFs (to the best of my knowledge) are synthetic - they achieve their "leverage" using derivatives, not by borrowing. These derivatives are not free, and like an option, can expire worthless. That's how the value in these ETFs evaporates over time, regardless of how the market performs.
Of course not “regardless” of how the market performs, take a look at UPRO over the last 2/3 yrs. But those are in theory reasonable concerns, however empirically most leveraged funds have performed as promised relative to their benchmarks (with a couple notable exceptions I admit). The entire point of derivatives (as suggested in the name) is that they inherantly bear an underlying relationship to their underlying security.
If you look at UPRO, its daily returns almost exactly track 3x of SPY. There’s no long-term “decay”, unless you are referring to volatility drag. VIX etfs are the notable exception, in that they do suffer from persistant negative carry.
Of course. It’s not an apple to Apple comparison, it’s just to point out those returns are possible. Also, would you rather have invested your salary from 2003 to 2020 not leveraged or always leveraged x3, bust in 2008, and then cash out today? Probably the latter. And that’s pretty consistent. After a recession, you usually have a decade of growth. So not exactly hard to do either.
sure, if I get to assume I'll have a steady salary indefinitely, I would prefer the 3x leverage. in reality, the stability of your job is correlated with the market. if I chose the leverage scenario, my portfolio would be valueless at the exact moment that I was most likely to lose my cashflow. without leverage, I would have taken a big hit, but still have had some money to draw on.
That'd be awesome. BTW, some flight tracking services do show detailed information about the airplane, like service time (age), etc... I might give it a try
If you know the flight number and name of airline and aircraft make -- do you also get the Aircraft (ID?) -- such that you can see ALL the routes . this plane has flown over the last N period and know how many flight hours and miles it has under its belt for some period?
You could then calc the downtime that the planes get for maint/cleaning/etc...
