“Every glittering ounce of [good news] should be cherished and hoarded and worshipped and fondled like a priceless diamond.”– Hunter S. Thompson

Coronavirus Pandemic: Hope and Progress 

Today, we are going to take a break from all the noxious news and daunting data about the Corona Crisis to give you some hopeful facts.

Yes, we know that, with shutdowns in nearly every country in the world, economies are faltering. But to provide some immediate relief, governments have pledged to support citizens and businesses with subsidies, loans, suspensions of tax and rent, and other measures.

And all over America (and the rest of the world), businesses, large and small, are stepping up to combat the virus and provide commercial and economic relief.

Across the globe, thousands of doctors, scientists, and researchers are working to find a vaccine. But they are also working hard on treatments to reduce symptoms and improve outcomes. The SARS-CoV-2 pathogen is similar to coronaviruses scientists have studied before, including the SARS virus that struck in 2002. That has given them an advantage in terms of moving in the right direction. They already know, for example, how the virus enters cells.

These early discoveries are being shared through hundreds of medical and scientific journals.

And the pace of all this work and all these actions is amazing. Almost everything listed below has happened in the last 30 days.

 Treatments, Remedies & Vaccines 

* A team of Canadian scientists has isolated and grown copies of the coronavirus. And Australian scientists have figured out how the body’s immune system fights it.

* Scientists at Israel’s Institute for Biological Research said that they have made a “significant breakthrough” in understanding the biological mechanism of the virus, including the way antibodies are produced by those who already have it.

* A team of scientists at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine said that they are making “quick” progress in developing a potential COVID-19 vaccine.

* The first US clinical trials for a potential vaccine have begun in Seattle. Biotech company Moderna has fused a piece of the genetic code for the pathogen’s S protein – the part that’s present in other coronaviruses, like SARS – with fatty nanoparticles that can be injected into the body.

* Imperial College London is designing a similar vaccine using coronavirus RNA, its genetic code.

* Johnson & Johnson and French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi are working with the US Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority to develop vaccines. Sanofi’s approach is to mix coronavirus DNA with genetic material from a harmless virus. Johnson & Johnson’s approach is to attempt to deactivate SARS-CoV-2 and switch off its ability to cause illness.

* Recent reports suggest that some existing antiviral drugs, including remdesivir and the Japanese flu drug favipiravir, may have an effect on the new coronavirus. Zhang Xinmin, an official at China’s science and technology ministry, said favipiravir, developed by a subsidiary of Fujifilm, had produced encouraging outcomes in clinical trials in Wuhan and Shenzhen involving 340 patients. “It has a high degree of safety and is clearly effective in treatment,” Zhang told reporters.

* Doctors in India have reported success in treating infected patients with a mixture of drugs usually used to tackle HIV, swine flu, and malaria.

* In China and Japan, doctors have had promising results using blood plasma from people who have recovered from COVID-19 to treat newly infected patients. This well-established medical technique could even be used to boost the immunity of people who are at risk of catching the disease.

* On March 27, the Food and Drug Administration issued an emergency use authorization for a new test developed by Abbott Laboratories that can deliver coronavirus results in as little as five minutes. Metro Health Medical Center in Cleveland is already using the new test.

* The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has started testing for antibodies to see if healthy people previously had the coronavirus. The tests could help the agency better understand the virus and its spread, indicating how prevalent the virus has been and whether a significant number of people have had it without actually getting sick.

* Preliminary studies in China report that the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine shows promise. “Cough, fever, and pneumonia went away faster, and the disease seemed less likely to turn severe in people who received hydroxychloroquine than in a comparison group not given the drug.”

* In hospitals in Boston, Alabama, Louisiana, Sweden, and Austria, researchers are conducting clinical trials to determine whether giving nitric oxide to patients with mild to moderate cases of COVID-19 can help them. The impetus for this was a report that showed good results from earlier trials in Italy that were themselves promising.

* A San Diego biotech company is developing a vaccine with Duke University and the National University of Singapore.

* A new drug, EIDD-2801, shows promise in reducing lung damage. Results of initial tests on mice were published April 6 in the journal Science Transnational Medicine. The tests showed that, when given as a treatment 12 or 24 hours after infection, EIDD-2801 could prevent severe lung injury in infected mice. “This new drug not only has high potential for treating COVID-19 patients, but also appears effective for the treatment of other serious coronavirus infections,” said senior author Baric. What is especially hopeful about EIDD-2801 is that it is a pill.

* Erasmus Medical Center has found an antibody that can fight against the coronavirus. While not a cure, it seems to be halting the infection temporarily and giving the patient time to recover.

Companies Helping Out

 * The sports world is raising money for stadium employees, Uber Eats is providing free delivery to help independent restaurants, professional soccer players are entertaining viewers with a FIFA tournament, restaurants are doling out free food to those in need.

* Formula 1 racing engineers at Mercedes have joined forces with University College London to develop a breathing device that can be used instead of putting patients on a ventilator in intensive care.

* Distilleries across the US are using high-proof alcohol to make hand sanitizer and are giving it away for free.

* Google is digging into its massive trove of data tracking the movements of people around the world to produce a series of reports designed to help policymakers and researchers in the fight against the coronavirus.

* Several major health insurers have promised to cover COVID-19 costs.

 * When the coronavirus outbreak spread through Microsoft’s home state of Washington, Bill Gates teamed up with Amazon, another Seattle-based tech giant, to provide at-home test kits to residents in the area.

* Bill Gates is also funding the construction of seven factories to manufacture vaccines rapidly when they are approved, instead of wasting time by waiting to find out which vaccines work… and then building the factories.

Economic Support 

* The US has passed legislation to give $1200 to most American adults and $500 to most children as part of a stimulus package that also includes loans to businesses and local and state governments, funds for hospitals, and more unemployment insurance.

 * Australia is paying AU$750 (around $445 or £380) to all lower-income citizens, and is offering loans to small and medium-sized businesses.

* Denmark is subsidizing 75% of workers’ salaries.

* France has promised that no company will be allowed to fail as a result of the pandemic. It is freezing tax and rent payments for small businesses and expanding the welfare system for workers.

* Germany has pledged at least 500 billion euros ($550 billion) in loan guarantees.

* Italy has promised help for families and one-off 500-euro payments to people who are self-employed.

* Spain has announced a 200-billion-euro rescue package in loans for small businesses, and is freezing mortgages and utility bills for individuals.

* Sweden is subsidizing 90% of workers’ salaries if they’re affected by coronavirus.

* The UK is guaranteeing 80% of workers’ salaries and providing limited sick pay to those who are self-employed.

 People Helping Out 

 * Many people have joined volunteer mutual aid groups to support the vulnerable in their own communities. When the UK government called for volunteers, more than a quarter of a million people signed up in a single day.

* People and businesses are creating online resources to help ease the tension and inconvenience of quarantine, many of them free or discounted.

* Kind gestures are everywhere, from thank-you signs for garbage collectors to asocially distanced “welcome home” parade for a young cancer patient.

* In the UK, people around the country simultaneously took to their windows, balconies, and gardens to cheer and applaud the health workers of the NHS.

* Apple, Facebook, and other companies are donating millions of face masks.

* Cuban doctors traveled to Italy to help deal with the spread of the disease.

* Celebrities are doing their bit, whether it’s James McAvoy donating £275,000 to health care workers, Amy Adams and Josh Gad reading stories for children, or John Krasinski starting a YouTube channel dedicated to good news.

A Growing Number of “Good News” Sources 

Thanks to the internet, it’s easy to keep up with the “good news” – and, thankfully, there’s plenty of it. I found the following online in less than 5 minutes:

 * “John Krasinski launches ‘good news’ network from quarantine”

* “The Good News Dashboard” LINK

 * “A look at some ‘good news’ across the US” LINK

“I have learned over the years that when one’s mind is made up, this diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does away with fear.” – Rosa Parks

What I’m Doing (and Not Doing) to Safeguard My Wealth

It’s a scary time. The coronavirus is scary. Being in the stock market is, too.

Before I tell you what I’m going to do about my stock portfolio, let’s take a quick look at the biggest crashes in the last 100 years. I think it’s important to remember that we’ve experienced financial hardships in the market, and we’ve been able to rebound from them.

The Crash of 1929

By almost every measure, the stock market crash of 1929 was the biggest and most devastating crash in world history.

It occurred after nearly 10 years of economic expansion from 1919-1929 (the Roaring Twenties). This was a decade of steady, dramatic growth that created a sense of irrational exuberance among investors who were happy to pay high prices for stocks and also leverage those investments by borrowing money to do it.

By August of 1929, word was getting out that times were changing. Unemployment was rising. Economic growth was slowing. Stocks were overpriced, and Wall Street was hugely overleveraged.

On October 24, the market dropped. It dropped again on the 28th. And by the 29th (Black Tuesday), the Dow had dropped 24.8%. On Black Tuesday, a record 16 million shares were traded on the New York Stock Exchange in one day. Investors collectively lost billions of dollars.

Financial giants such as William C. Durant and members of the Rockefeller family attempted to stabilize the situation by buying large quantities of stocks to demonstrate their confidence in the market. But this didn’t stop the rapid decrease in prices.

Twelve years of worldwide depression followed, and the U.S. economy didn’t recover until after World War II.

The Crash of 1987

Like the crash of 1929, the crash of 1987 occurred after a long-running bull market.

On October 19 (Black Monday), the Dow dropped 22.6% – the biggest one-day drop, in percentage terms, ever.

Theories behind the reasons for the crash included a slowdown in the US economy, a drop in oil prices, and escalating tensions between the US and Iran. But the financial reasons were similar to those for the crash of 1929: speculators paying crazy prices for overpriced stocks and purchasing junk bonds leveraged mostly through margin accounts.

On top of that, something new was happening: computerized trading. It made selling easier and faster and, thus, accelerated the sell-off.

When the dust settled, the market was down 23%. But unlike the crash of 1929, Black Monday didn’t result in an economic recession. In fact, it began strengthening almost immediately and led to a 12-year bull run.

The Dot-com Bust of 1999-2000

In the 1990s, access to the internet started to shape people’s lives. Easy access to online retailers, such as AOL, Pets.com, Webvan.com, Geocities, and Globe.com, helped drive online growth. It also gave investors a huge opportunity to make money.

Shares of these companies rose dramatically – in most cases, far beyond intrinsic values.

In March 2000, some of them started folding, and investors were shedding tech stocks at a rapid pace. The tech-focused Nasdaq fell from 5000 in early 2001 to just 1000 by 2002.

The “Great Recession” Stock Market Crash of 2008/2009

Besides the crash of 1929, the crash of 2008 was in many respects the most serious financial collapse of the last 100 years. Many investors don’t realize how close the US financial sector came to collapsing.

Like every crash I’ve mentioned, this one followed a long-term bull market (from 2002 to 2007). Also like the others, it was instigated by speculation. Not so much by speculation in conventional stocks, but by the widespread use of mortgage-backed securities in the housing sector.

These products – which were sold by financial institutions to investors, pension funds, and banks – declined in value as housing prices receded. (A scenario that started in 2006.) With fewer American homeowners able to meet their mortgage loan obligations, mortgage-backed security values plummeted, sending financial institutions into bankruptcy.

With investment risk in the stratosphere, investors were unwilling to provide much-needed liquidity in the nation’s financial markets.

And we all remember what followed. The bursting of the US housing bubble and Lehman Brothers’ collapse nearly crushed the world’s financial system and resulted in a damaged housing market, business failures, and a wounded global economy.

A Few Facts That Might Make You Feel Better

None of the four major stock market crashes permanently damaged the US economy. In every case, the markets climbed back up and then went on to new highs. But the duration of the downturns varied.

The 1929 crash was the slowest to recover at 10 to 12 years. (Depending on how it is measured.) It took seven years for the market to fully recover from the crash of 2008. And the crash of 1987 began recovering after a few months.

Even where full recovery took years, the upward trend began in months or just a few years.

Those crashes happened because of a combination of economic imbalances, flaws in the banking and financial sectors, a period of manic investing that brought market values to unrealistic heights, and panic.

In other words, they were caused by economic and financial crises.

The current crash was precipitated by a health crisis. In stock market language, that’s considered an event-based crash.

Past health scares have shocked the market, too. In 2013, for example, the MERS outbreak caused the market to drop by 6%. And in 2003, the SARS outbreak caused a worldwide panic, taking the market down by 14%. But both of these event-driven crashes were followed quickly by a surge back to past highs and then beyond.

On the Worrisome Side

Is what we are experiencing today just another event-driven crash?

I don’t think so. There’s no doubt that fear is the force behind this fall. But the fear we have today is much greater than any in my lifetime. And it is already negatively affecting businesses, banks, and other financial institutions worldwide.

And that’s not to mention the fundamental factors of a history of high debt (both government and consumer), years of increasingly expensive stocks, and lots of speculation.

 As I pointed out in my February 17 blog,

* Half of all investment-grade debt is teetering on the edge of becoming junk. And more of these risky loans are being owned by mutual funds than ever before.

* The national debt continues to grow. It was $5.6 trillion in 2000. Today, it’s estimated to be more than $23.3 trillion.

* As a percentage of the country’s gross domestic product, the debt looks even worse. In 2000, that $5.6 trillion in debt represented 55% of our GDP. Today’s +/-$24 trillion represents nearly 110% of our GDP.

It’s certainly possible that the Corona Crash could be the beginning of an economic downturn as big as or bigger than any the US economy has ever had. The collapse of the stock market is already greater than any crash before.

I’ve written about the stock market at least a dozen times over the past 10 years. And in each of those essays I’ve reminded readers that I don’t have a crystal ball and that my guess about the market’s future is as valid as your next Uber driver’s.

In my lifetime as an investor, I’ve seen several serious bear markets. Had I been able to predict their tops and bottoms, I would have cashed out my stocks early, moved into cash and gold during the descent, and put back that and some more at the bottom.

But since I’ve never had a crystal ball, I’ve never tried to time the market. I’ve always taken the view that, while I can’t know how steeply the market may drop or how long the recession might last, sooner or later prices will return to their pre-crash peaks and then continue to move up from there.

I should say, though, that this strategy makes sense only when the stocks you own are in large, profitable businesses that are “antifragile,” that have the resources a business needs to survive a crash and even an extended recession.

As long-time readers know, my Legacy Portfolio is populated exclusively with companies like that.

 What About Buying Gold?

I bought a fair amount of gold back in 2004, when it was selling for $400 an ounce.

I didn’t buy it as a hedge against the dollar or the stock market. I bought bullion coins (mostly) as a “chaos” hedge. A stockpile of tradable hard assets that might come in handy if the world economy moved into another depression like we had in the 1930s.

If we do see that economic era repeated, the value of my gold will almost surely continue to increase. But I’m not counting on that. Its purpose isn’t to compensate for the paper wealth I’d lose in stocks but to be a form of insurance – “just in case” currency that I could use to buy necessities for family and friends.

Which raises the question: When and how do you buy gold? And the answer is, you buy it just like you buy any sort of insurance. Figure out the likelihood of the risk. Determine how much coverage you would need. Then decide if the premium you have to pay is worth it.

When I decided to buy gold coins, I bought enough of them (at an average price of $450) to sustain my family and my core business for a good length of time. I didn’t buy enough to cover historical expenses for many years. I bought enough to pay for the basics. And that helped me feel more secure.

But that was hardly all that I did to protect my family’s wealth against a stock market crash and a recession. It was just one piece of a financial structure that I began setting up 40 years ago and began writing about in Early to Rise nearly 30 years ago.

What About Stockpiling Cash?

I like having a portion of my net investible assets in cash for all the obvious reasons – doing my own banking, using it for fast moving investment opportunities, and as part of my insurance program against crises like this one.

But that feeling is counterbalanced by the recognition that cash is generally a low- or no-return asset class. Therefore, having a lot of it means that I won’t be taking advantage of the historically high returns of the stock market, the real estate market, private equity, and private lending.

I don’t have a fixed number in my head for how much cash I should have at any one time. I let the markets make those decisions for me.

I don’t, for example, invest in rental real estate properties when I can’t find properties I can buy for less than eight times gross rent. Likewise, I don’t buy additional shares of Legacy stocks when their P/E ratios are expensive by historical standards.

By adhering strictly to these sorts of value-based investing strategies, I am effectively prevented from putting my new earnings into any one of them. And that means I end up accumulating lots of cash while these markets are expensive.

In the past half-dozen years, most stocks – including most of my Legacy stocks – have been so expensive (relative to earnings) that I have not allowed myself to buy them. This means that the dividends I’ve been receiving for the stocks in my Legacy Portfolio have been going into my cash account. And that is okay with me.

I normally put a good chunk of my earnings every year into real estate. About 10 years ago, I began selling off my individual units and buying apartments, where I could get better yields with less hassle. But the number of such deals that I could find diminished to a trickle in the last three or four years. So, again, by sticking to my valuation standards, I’ve been effectively locked out of these markets, too.

I have put some money into private debt and private equity. But only when I knew the borrowers and the businesses very well and felt sure my lending was secure.

 In past essays on the stock market, I’ve said that – to make my wealth as antifragile as possible – I did my projections based on a stock market crash of 50%. When I picked that number nearly 15 years ago, it seemed like quite a long shot. Today, it doesn’t feel so crazy.

My Version of Antifragility

 As I’ve indicated, my core investment philosophy mimics Nassim Taleb’s concept of antifragility.

In his bestselling book Antifragile, Taleb defined antifragility as the ability to not only survive but also benefit from random events, errors, and volatility.

My version of that is very simple:

* I invest primarily for income, not for growth. That means rental real estate, bonds, private debt, income-producing equity, and dividend-yielding stocks. Depending on the economy, not less than 80% and sometimes as much as 90% of my net investible wealth is in income-producing assets.

* I invest in what is proven today, not what might happen tomorrow. Investing in income-producing assets means investing in current facts, not future possibilities. This is, admittedly, a conservative approach to wealth building. I am willing to give up the potential for cashing in big on the upside for a smaller but virtually guaranteed return.

* I don’t gamble. I am as tempted to invest in attractive speculations as the next person. But I’ve learned from experience that is a bad idea. My historical ROI for the speculation I’ve done is nearly perfect. I’ve lost almost all my money every single time. I will occasionally invest in a friend’s business. But when I do that, I consider it a gift. I expect no return and usually get no return. So I limit those “investments” to how much I’m willing to lose.

* I pay attention to value. I invest exclusively in income-producing assets, but that doesn’t mean I don’t pay attention to how much they are worth. As I said above, I invest in stocks when they are well-priced relative to their P/E ratios (among other metrics). I invest in real estate when I can buy properties that are inexpensive relative to their rental income. I buy debt when I can get a yield that is at least better than inflation. Etc.

* I hope for the best but plan for the worst. In terms of antifragility, nothing is more important than planning for the worst. Planning for the worst in good times allows you to survive and even thrive during the bad times. My worst-case planning began by imagining almost everything going wrong at one time. The market collapses. The economy moves into a deep recession. My businesses fail. The whole nine yards.

When you think that way, you have no choice but to include all the fundamental asset-protection strategies in your financial planning, as well as a few more. Most notably, diversification and position sizing.

I won’t waste our time talking about the importance of diversifying financial assets. I don’t look at it as a theory. I see it as a fact. To achieve maximum antifragility, dividing your financial assets into different classes is rule number one.

But in my humble opinion, position sizing (limiting how much money you put into any particular investment) is almost as important. When your investible net worth is relatively small, you might have to limit individual investments to 10% of your portfolio. The goal, as you acquire wealth, is to reduce that percentage as you go along. These days, I rarely put more than 1% of my net investible wealth in any investment.

So What Am I Doing?

Here’s a look at my portfolio:

Stocks: I came into the stock investing game late. And cautiously. When I set up the Legacy Portfolio about 14 years ago, I invested what was at that time 10% of my net investible wealth in those stocks. Thanks to the bull market that followed, my stock account doubled and stood, at the beginning of the Corona Crisis, at about 20% of the portfolio. That’s a good deal. But it’s still only 20%. So when the market is down 30%, like it is as I write this, that means my net investible wealth is down by 6%. If the market continues to fall to 50% – my worst-case scenario –I’ll be down 10% overall. Not good, but not bad either.

My strategy for stocks is to hold on and wait for the market to recover. It might happen in six months (unlikely). It might happen in a year (possible). Or it might happen in 10 years (safe bet). I’m hoping the return will be sooner rather than later – but I’ve planned for later, so I’m not going to fret about it.

Debt: About 10% of my net investible worth is in debt instruments. My debt portfolio is diversified among bonds and private lending. Because of the private debt, I’m getting decent returns – from 4% to 12% on most of my deals. For a while, I’ve not been able to buy good debt at good prices. But that may change. If so, that’s where some of the cash will go.

Ongoing Enterprises: About 20% of my net investible wealth is invested in about a half-dozen private companies, ranging form $10 million to $1 billion. This is where I get the lion’s share of my current income. I’m very concerned that this income may slow or dry up completely in the next year. If it does, I will have to turn to other income sources. Meantime, I’m working hard to keep those businesses afloat.

Real Estate: About 40% of my net investible wealth is invested in real estate, and 80% of that is in income-producing properties in various locations. If all of these properties were leveraged, I’d be worried. But my debt on them is less than 5%. I may see diminished income. But in the worst-case scenario, it will be a 25% drop, which would still be acceptable.

Hard Assets and Cash: About 5% of my net investible wealth is in hard assets like bullion coins, rare coins, and investment-grade art. These are last-refuge resources. For the time being, I have not thought of tapping into them. That could change.

Cash: As I explained above, my cash position has grown in the past several years because my preferred income-producing assets have gotten pricey. I’m expecting that some time before this crisis is over, cash will be king again. I’m waiting for that.

Basically, I’m doing just about nothing right now. I am actively working to protect my businesses, but I’m not selling stocks. I’m not selling real estate. I’m not selling my businesses. I’m not even selling my debt.

We are going to get poorer. That’s for sure. But – for the moment – I don’t feel that I need to make any changes. The way I diversified my assets 20 years ago seems to giving me the protection I had hoped it would today.

But What About You?

If you have been reading my writing these past 20 years and even loosely following my investing strategy, you should be in more or less the same position I am in. If you feel good about that, as I do, you will probably want to do exactly what I’m doing: mostly nothing.

But if you aren’t diversified and have the lion’s share of your money in cryptos or growth stocks – well then, you are going to have to listen to the advice of the people that persuaded you to put so much of your money in those deals.

And while you are doing that, don’t despair. Double down on your day job. Things will (eventually) get better – and when they do, you’ll invest smarter.

Santa gave Francis, our four-year-old grandson, a toy named Cosmo.

From a distance, Cosmo looked like a cheap plastic stocking stuffer shaped like a tractor. But it moved in what seemed to be a purposeful way. It approached me and looked up, its digital eyes scanning me.

“That’s Daddo,” Francis said.

Cosmo nodded its head and blinked.

Then it said, “Merry Christmas, Daddo!”

In 1965, Gordon E. Moore, co-founder of Intel, postulated that the number of transistors that could be packed into a given unit of space would double about every two years while the cost per transistor would halve. The leading scientific community of that decade laughed at him. Such a pace of acceleration seemed absurd to them. But Moore was not wrong. In fact, the doubling has occurred about every 18 months.

In recent years, polymath superstar Ray Kurzweil has been predicting all sorts of modern miracles based on Moore’s Law. Kurzweil believes that advancements will speed up even faster because computer and biological technology has accelerated the nature of evolution itself.

It makes one wonder what Cosmo will evolve into.

Here’s my guess: By 2040, biological pets will be a thing of the past. In their place will be unimaginably advanced Cosmos, cuddly, loving, and supremely intelligent technological creatures whose job it will be to entertain, babysit, and socialize children.

Ah, yes. The New Year is always a good time for predictions. And although I don’t believe in betting on the future, Cosmo has inspired me to conjure up 18 more prognostications for your amusement.

Predictions for 2020 and Beyond 

* Donald Trump will be reelected, winning a higher percentage of Latino and African American support of any Republican president in the modern era.

* Sometime thereafter, we will have another financial crash, with real estate prices dropping 15% to 20% and the equity markets falling that much or more – this despite frantic government efforts at “quantitative easing.”

* After the crash, another effort to oust Trump from office will take place and succeed.

* Continuing innovations in technology and biology will gradually unleash a new era of economic expansion that will ameliorate the debt problem and improve the lifestyles of the middle and working classes. (The mega-rich will stay rich and the poor will stay poor, but only relatively. Absolute living conditions will improve everywhere.)

* Meanwhile, lots of ordinary things will improve. For example, in the next 3 to 5 years, weather forecasting will achieve 90% reliability for major threats such as hurricanes, earthquakes, and even forest fires.

* In the next 10 years, children around the world will be learning what their parents want them to learn by playing with addictively amusing interactive robots that will prove to be better teachers than the flesh-and-blood teachers.

* And for those worried about global warming, good news: Accelerating advances in the storage, transmission, and use of solar and wind energy will reduce our reliance on fossil fuels by 30% in the next 10 years. (Mostly in the wealthier countries.)

* After decades of disappointments in the fight against cancer and heart disease, in the next 5 years breakthroughs in immunotherapy and genetic medicine will make most forms of these two primary killers treatable, in the way AIDS is treatable today.

* In the next decade, urban congestion will be greatly reduced by a combination of delivery drones (even for large objects like steel girders), driverless transport, and penalties leveraged on individually owned vehicles.

* Cryptocurrencies will not succeed as independent currencies. Instead, they will be outlawed and replaced by digital currencies issued by banks, brokerages, and other financial institutions that will allow governments to track every financial move their citizens make.

* The biggest economic challenge of the next two decades will be the addition of billions of children born in still poverty-stricken Sub-Saharan Africa… while the non-immigrant population of the “advanced” world will stagnate or fall.

* On the positive side for Africa (and India): Pneumonia, currently the “ultimate disease of poverty,” will be virtually eliminated in the next 7 years.

* During the next decade, many aging, crumbling mid-sized cities in North America will be renovated as urban populations abandon their decomposing neighborhoods and move into newer, cleaner, and less expensive ones, such as the one planned by Kevin Plank in Baltimore.

* In the next 5 years, farm animals – cows, lambs, chickens, and goats – raised in large production facilities will have better food, more space to grow, and healthful amenities such as musical and meditation treatments to improve their immune systems and fatten them up.

* In the next 2 to 3 years, most large chain stores will have eliminated checkout counters, using smart shopping carts with scanning and computing technology to process payments as items are loaded into them.

* The current price wars among ride-calling and sharing apps will end in the next 3 to 5 years, leaving only two or three companies standing. Uber will not be one of them.

* The current CBD craze will be over in the next 3 years, with 80% to 90% of the companies that are currently profiting from the craze going out of business.

* Yuval Harari will be proven right in his prediction that Homo sapiens will begin to be  (in the next 50 years) replaced by a new species of humans that are part robot and part computer.

Feeling Gloomy About the Future?

Here Are 1O Bits of Good News 

The news media understands that bad news sells better than good. So it’s not surprising that if you allow yourself more than, say, 30 minutes a day reading newspapers or on social media, you’ll develop a very pessimistic view of the future.

Whenever I’m feeling that way, I spend an hour or two searching for good news. And guess what? There’s plenty of it.

Here’s a sample of what I discovered after rolling out of bed on the wrong side this morning:

1. The number of cigarettes being smoked in the UK fell by nearly a quarter between 2011 and 2018. This means that 1.4 billion fewer cigarettes are being smoked every year.
2. For the first time, humans have achieved direct brain-to-brain communication through non-invasive electroencephalographs (EEGs). The “BrainNet” system achieved over 80%accuracy.
3. Saudi Arabia, traditionally one of the world’s most misogynistic countries, has granted women the right to travel overseas without male permission. Women can also now register births, marriages, and divorces; be issued official family documents, and be guardians to minor children.
4. Engineers from MIT accidentally developed a material 10 times blacker than anything in existence. And in case you’re wondering, it may actually have a practical use. As pointed out by Brian Wardle, one of the developers, “There are optical and space-science applications for very black materials, and of course, artists have been interested in black, going back well before the Renaissance.”
5. The poverty rate in the United States has reached its lowest point since 2001. There were 1.4 million fewer people living in poverty in 2018 than in 2017.
6. Starting next summer in San Diego, Uber Eats will be delivering dinner for two via drone.
7. California has done away with private prisons. This is a major victory for criminal justice reform because it removes the profit motive from incarceration.
8. A year ago, Chile began a campaign to ban plastic straws. Since then, 200 million fewer plastic straws have been delivered to shops and restaurants.
9. MediView XR recently raised $4.5 million to further develop its Extended Reality Surgical Navigation system. The system gives surgeons a form of “x-ray vision” when conducting cancer ablations and biopsies.
10. The Chinese city of Handa has deployed a team of traffic robots to help police with road patrol, vehicle management, and accident warnings.