Coronavirus is dead... All time high again...

Even if the coronavirus isn't any more lethal than influenza, if wide-spread enough can have economic repercussions. Market today is saying, "no worries".

We actually don't know where we currently stand with the potential for this disease. With a 14-day incubation period and "jet travel", we could be in a bigger mess than currently realized.

We'll see.
 
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My guess is that the Fed won't lower interest rates, but will overall be very dovish. They might say that they will remain accomodative regarding interest rate policy and be prepared to act should any economic weakness from the virus spread to the US. They will probably say that while they see the repo issue as largely behind us (whether that is true or not), they will continue providing liquidity if needed in the future. That's my *guess*. As far as Apple, who knows. I hope they do ok even though I do not have a position on Apple.
 
It will hit tourism this year, one company in Japan reported over 20,000 cancellations. There will be fewer Chinese tourists and vice versa. A lot less business journeys in Asia etc.

The scale of these pandemic outbreaks depends on the effectiveness of the initial containment response and some luck. Based on the known infections and deaths I was reading a medical report last night which did a rough estimate that the current coronovirus is roughly* 17x more deadly than the seasonal flu. This still just a small fraction of one percent in absolute mortality terms but it will affect industry.


*Very rough and acknowledging not enough data yet
 
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Bugenhagen said:
It will hit tourism this year, one company in Japan reported over 20,000 cancellations. There will be fewer Chinese tourists and vice versa.
More...

I have no idea what the stats are, but why the hell would anyone want to go to China to vacation? To eat snake, live mouse, and bat? To breathe the polluted air? Enjoy censorship and mass surveillance? Guess it would be cool to see the Great Wall, but I really have no desire at all to go there. I don't think this will really affect travel longer than a few weeks and perhaps not at all outside China as long as it's contained in China (no more than a handful of cases spreading outside the country).
 
ET180 said:
I have no idea what the stats are, but why the hell would anyone want to go to China to vacation? To eat snake, live mouse, and bat? To breathe the polluted air? Enjoy censorship and mass surveillance? Guess it would be cool to see the Great Wall, but I really have no desire at all to go there. I don't think this will really affect travel longer than a few weeks and perhaps not at all outside China as long as it's contained in China (no more than a handful of cases spreading outside the country).
More...

A lot do go though and remember that the US is only 4.3% of the world population, that leaves a lot people who get their stuff made in China and have to send various business reps regularly. It can't all be video conference.

This may go on for a couple of months to far longer if containment is ineffective. I don't suggest people panic but it is unfortunate there is a vibe that these things are fake news or not serious because containment was successful in most cases. Perhaps the 2009 swine flu was an exception with over 560,000 attributed deaths on top of the usual toll from normal influenza. The flu we can from experience handle, it seems to behave in a range as far as mutations go, this corona virus is novel and might have a nasty trick up it's sleeve or not mutate dangerously at all.

If it gets spreading in the US it will be interesting considering the numbers who will avoid treatment due to copay costs or no insurance at all.
 
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