Afternoon all.
I was looking at the weekend futures on IG and noticed that following Trumps decisions not to quarantine New York, they have recovered a bit.
I feel this is temporary relief though and as I continue to look at the news stories out there getting increasingly concerned that the situation in the US is going to build into something that creates stress from many angles.
The CDC did issue a strong travel advisory against non-essential travel for New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, but it’s crazy to think they they are still at the point of issuing ‘advisories’. I was reading the literature for the 15 Days To Slow The Spread campaign and they are issued as ‘guidelines’.
Contrast this to most of Europe and many other countries now where people are ordered not to leave their homes, businesses must close, road checkpoints are in force, fines are being issued and even jail sentences threatened.
I fear the US is sleepwalking into a situation where their numbers will suddenly looks scary and it will not just be a health tragedy, but it will create of political storm as the Trump administration find it impossible to hide from their failings through this and the economic ramifications of the slow/lack of action will further rattle markets.
The chart below displays COVID-19 data as at 28/03/20, ordered by New Cases for yesterday.
The US accounted for 30% of all worldwide new cases reported yesterday and I think that as the more severe measures other countries are taking start to produce some results, the US could end up accounting for 70-80% of all worldwide cases.
Just 4 days ago Trump was still talking about re-opening for Easter, and since then US cases have more than doubled and deaths have nearly tripled.
I could not find an update of the US restrictions map I’ve been displaying recently (I’ll add in on my blog when I do), but with less than half the US in any kind of mandated lock down, the opportunity for the virus to be rapidly spreading remains high and complacency caused by the President’s constant rhetoric that things are going well could be adding to the issues.
I feel like I’m full of doom and gloom at the moment but it’s sad to see Italy’s deaths go over 10,000 and here in the UK we had our worst day for deaths which sent our total over 1,000.
The numbers don’t look great for Europe in the next few days with infections curves still on the up. India are about to ramp up testing so this coming week will probably start to reveal the extent of their problems and with a population of 1.3 billion it’s not just the virus to be concerned about as rampant poverty combined with the lock down pose a hunger crisis.
Coming back to markets, it really is just the stimulus measures from governments and central banks that is managing to lift markets like we saw over the last week. There is literally no data that would have enabled a rally if not for that.
I think we are in store for a week of bad sentiment with the US in focus but I really hope that by next weekend, here in Europe we prove that locking down is working and it provides encouragement to everyone.
Lock downs may still get extended and I’m not sure what that does for economic forecasts and the pain for people and businesses, but seeing that there is a path back to normality on the horizon could mean that the next dip, if recent lows can even be broken which is unclear, is the one to buy and that a bottoming process could be in the making.
I hope it’s this simple and no one wants this situation to drag-on longer as that just means more loss of life.
Being isolated in the house is really turning me into rambling buffoon once I get the fingers warmed-up on the keyboard, I’d better stop lol.
There’s a lot more I could say, happy to chat in the comments (on eToro) around specific topics/questions.
Stay safe everyone, thanks for your time.
$SPX500 $GER30 $UK100 $NSDQ100
