On Monday, the Dow plunged 1,031 points. The next day, the stock market continued its losses by closing 879 points lower. In total, the DJIA (Dow Jones Industrial Average) lost nearly 1,900 points as fears over the spread of the Covid-19 coronavirus intensified around the world. Investors scrambled to sell their shares and diverted their money elsewhere.

 

The market sell-off was the worst 2-day drop in four years. The death toll from the epidemic has reached 2,770 while total cases have hit 81,279. On Tuesday, Iran’s health ministry confirmed 15 deaths from the highly infectious virus – the highest fatalities of any country outside of China. But critics said the figure is much higher due to government’s cover-up.

 

The virus is not only spreading in the Middle East, but also Europe and other parts of the world. Italy has become the outbreak point in Europe with its 12th death and 325 confirmed cases. France saw its second death while Greece confirmed its first case. From Italy, it has also spread to Austria, Croatia and Switzerland, all of which have reported cases involving people who had been to Italy.

Britain has started random tests for the coronavirus on flu patients to prevent the virus from spreading. South Korea has reported 115 new cases, bringing the total to 1,261. The Japanese government’s response to the outbreak has been condemned as staggeringly incompetent. As of Wednesday, there were 847 confirmed cases of Covid-19 and six deaths in Japan.

 

While the first infection in Japan was confirmed on January 28,  it took until February 17 for the Health Ministry of Japan to even inform the public about how to contact government health care centres in case of a suspected infection. To make matters worse, there is a serious short supply of face masks, disinfectant and test kits in Japan, a supposedly developed country.

 

But the stock market plunges started after U.S. health officials’ warning that the coronavirus is “likely’ to continue to spread throughout the entire United States. Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, told reporters on a conference call – “Ultimately, we expect we will see community spread in the United States.”

Nancy said that the question isn’t if anymore, but when will the virus expand in the U.S. The federal health authorities expects a sustained transmission of the virus and called for businesses, schools and communities to prepare and plan for potential outbreaks. Americans saw 14 confirmed diagnosed cases, with an additional 40 from the outbreak on the Diamond Princess cruise ship in Asia.

 

The situation has gotten so serious that President Donald Trump was reportedly super furious about the plunging stock market. He has blamed the health officials’ warnings for spooking investors. Even after National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow said the sell-off due to the virus has created a buying opportunity, panicked investors were not convinced and continued to sell their stocks.

 

During an official visit to India, President Trump on Monday (Feb 24) sent his message through Twitter – “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. We are in contact with everyone and all relevant countries. CDC & World Health have been working hard and very smart. The stock market started to look very good to me!” Yet, the stock market tumbled anyway.

Trump is so concerned about the stock market performance that on Wednesday morning, he announced he would be holding a press conference at 6 p.m. about the coronavirus. The president told aides not to give predictions that might cause further tremors. Interestingly, it was only last month that Trump refused to talk about the virus’ impact in America.

 

The president downplayed the impact, saying – “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. We have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.”  Now there are more than 50 people in the U.S. with coronavirus. Despite the assurance that everything is rosy, statements from the CDC and White House economic team contradicts each other.

 

The panic in the U.S. also came about 3 weeks after the Chinese government had accused American of causing “panic” in its response to the deadly coronavirus outbreak. China’s criticism follows the US decision to declare a public health emergency and deny entry to foreign nationals who had visited China in the past two weeks.

Now, Trump is at the receiving end. Minutes after arriving back in Washington from a trip to New Delhi, the president slammed the media, accusing MSNBC and CNN of overreacting to the coronavirus threat and of intentionally spooking economic markets. But news media should be Trump’s least concern. There’s a bigger problem.

 

Apparently, top management of global companies are still clueless about the coronavirus impact. Most of the companies think the crisis will be solved in 3 months. Carlos Tavares, chief executive of the carmaker PSA, said – “We expect impact only in quarter one by 4% (in revenues).” However, Taselaar, from Lucerne Capital Management, said the 2020 company earnings could be disappointing.

 

It will be considered lucky if the coronavirus could completely go away within 6 months. But chances are it may last up to 9 months – or even a year. That would create real panic, not to mention stock market crashes and recession. Company owners have already warned about the impact of the outbreak in recent earnings reports, but many have put up an optimistic tone for obvious reason.

 

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February 27th, 2020 by financetwitter

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