Why would you be "very shocked" to see many more cases out of China? It's rapidly spreading to numerous countries and with the 10-20 day incubation time they've only caught the earliest travelers in other countries now, and the very first secondary infections.

CDC confirming first person-to-person virus case in US, a spouse of someone in illinois who had gone to china

risk off for a little bit, i imagine its gonna be choppy and jittery through early next week.

There are very few cases outside of China so far. See https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/a...23467b48e9ecf6

I'm seeing average incubation period is 5 days with longest being 14.

Not surprising to see the first case of h2h in the US considering if you're infected and you **** your wife, she's probably going to get it as well.

Yeah, I've watched it and read all the news. Two weeks ago there were "very few" cases in China. The virus seems to be able to do self sustaining spread and is in 17 countries. They've caught a tiny fraction of people that have it.

There is hard evidence of flu-like spread. Four colleagues of a Chinese woman who did a business workshop in Germany (all Germans) caught the virus - two days before she was symptomatic. They weren't "****ing", as you put it.

A bus driver in Japan caught it with no known contact. Flu-like spreading seems >90% at this stage, asymptomatic spreading seems >90% as well. If both are true we have a probably unstoppable flu-level spread (tens of millions of people within a month, millions of deaths eventually).

Anyone buying here is pretty dumb imo. We're 3% off all time highs with >30% chance of a meaningful global spread and economic impact.

Agreed, I'm not going balls deep long in anything right now. I did just buy some otm calls expiring tomorrow in some Chinese related names (LK, BIDU, WYNN). If I'm right and we see less cases reported from China tonight, the asymmetric risk in these calls is well worth it IMO

I think it's time to dumb things down and just say market is going down for next 2 weeks or 1 month and fear mongering is going to rise with all the noise and information going out there. I think it's that time where you just have to close your eyes for 2 weeks and let things ride out for what they are.

Flat at just a little better than breakeven.

Edit: Would often have carried this overnight but I'm already short the S&P and don't need the added overnight risk. Don't usually trade individual stocks and was just taking a bit of a well reasoned punt.

Just learned the WHO is a total incompetent joke. They declared a "global health emergency" but we're on our own in an epidemic as they have no clue what's going on.

Also upped the odds that China isn't providing real numbers on the epidemic. The (paid off) WHO officials spent half the press conference bending over backward to not offend China by declaring the global emergency.

No. The West uses serving spoons and doesn't share forks. Can't say the same for China.

It's why Hep A is so prevalent in China/Taiwan.

I also agree with Shuffle that Fed > virus.

that press conference was an abomination. you'd think it was funded by China. crazy volatility, tho.

now they say its an emergency but they arent recommending restricting travel (ok) and stocks back to highs off of that.

at least the commodities related to China are understanding the graveness of the situation (copper, hogs). maybe american stocks keep rallying as the safe haven in all of this. china's markets are gonna reopen during the super bowl, sigh lol.

They are at least a week behind on news and what's actually happening/going to happen in best case scenario (and I'm far from wishing anything bad happens or a fear monger, I wish they could find a cure tomorrow, but the developing vaccines aren't going to be tested on humans for next 3 months!).

All fear that's going to happen isn't priced in currently even a fraction. I'm gonna put on a tinfoil hat and say a lot of it is being restricted to come out, because there are massive positions currently being build and once the trigger is going to be pressed, things are gonna start flying.

Going to be another great weekend put hold at this rate (depends on news development whether I'll enter later tomorrow).

I bet you the S&P won't be down for the next two weeks. On 3/1/20 it'll close higher than 3283. You remind me of loudmouth know-it-alls at the poker table who feel compelled to blather their sports picks to everyone, and the surer they are the better of a fade it is.

You think the WHO is an incompetent joke that has no clue what's going on? You think you're better informed than the WHO--the organization with the top epidemiologists in the world and access to much more info than what you've gleaned from whatever news outlets you read? You think some Chinese officials paid them off? Who did they pay off exactly--the DG, the whole board, all the scientists involved? Some bureaucrat told them to say it's fine to travel and then handed them a billion dollars in an envelope? Sorry you're mad your puts expired, but don't let it make you a dolt.

All you guys in this thread saying there's a significant chance this virus kills 100k+ people and causes the S&P to drop 20% or whatever, get real. The WHO has given the all clear to travel to and from China, and the only reason they've said it's an unprecedented emergency is so that they can look like heroes when they contain it with a three figure death toll.

Yes, that was obvious after their press conference. Did you watch it? Go watch it then see if you have the same opinion.



All of us had our mouths open at what a weird clown show they are. It was also obvious they had no clue what they're doing after they admitted and apologized they made a "human error" misidentifying the risk level their reports two days in a row. I didn't understand how that was possible in a professional organization until I watched that insane clown show of a video

You know this how? The UN is a corrupt and worthless organization in general.

The head of the WHO is an Ethiopian politician with little clinical experience and a history of claimed corruption.

You really don't know how the world works, do you? These guys are such clowns they don't even need paying - any competent outfit can bamboozle them. Pressure from their own governments and deals keep them from doing what China doesn't want. And a billion dollars? lol? Various US spies who gave nuclear secrets to the Russians were paid a few hundred K total over many years. In an incompetent committee type environment like the WHO, paying off a single guy is sufficient.

I'm laughing my ass off and a little weirded out that a peak global body can be such a clown show, not mad.

From the information we have now it's greater than 30% chance that it kills 100K+ people. It transmits like the flu and is about 20x deadlier with about 50x the serious illness/hospitalization rate. 12-15% of those that get it develop severe respiratory distress leading to complications like hypoxia and severe pneumonia/secondary infections. It's 1/3 SARS but with asymptomatic spread. The only piece of data in question is the asymptomatic transmission rate. If it's low it might be as containable as SARS. If it's high it will go as far as the flu and kill millions. At the moment the data indicates the rate is high. One particularly worrying case from Germany involves four people getting it who did a business workshop with a Chinese woman - a woman who didn't develop any symptoms until 2 days after the contact with these four ended.

So "they want to look like heros" conspiracy theory vs "they were paid off" conspiracy theory? What happened to them being competent professionals? If you live in the real world, the latter conspiracy theory is more compelling. Particularly since they spent half the video kissing China's ass. Even the reporters at the event were openly mocking them.

The incompetence is provable by the way. They declined to call it a global emergency a week ago when it clearly was, now they're doing it a week late? The data was clear a week ago.

FWIW I agree with their decision. The cat is out of the bag now and if asymptomatic transmission is common then millions are guaranteed to die and there's no point restricting global travel and trade as the economic impacts will be worse than millions dying. The time to act to contain this if it's as bad as it could be was weeks ago.

It seems reasonable to consider that they intentionally misclassified it so as to not rock the boat. And now (LDO...) they don't have much of a choice but to fess up.

That being said, I am not sure that the markets care right now. AMZN (after AAPL and MSFT...not FB) just crushed and gained $200 / share (which is a **** ton of market cap) after their earnings announcement.

NQ pushing the highs and ES is right behind. I think NQ makes new highs overnight and ES will be right there.

It is like, who has the balls to short the rest of earnings after AMZN gains like $100B in market cap? Take profits yes, but pay for premium and hope for bad news over the weekend seems a little thin to me.

To folks who think this will not significantly affect markets (eg. Morishita) what would it take to change your mind?

Daily growth rates based on WHO figures in China for past 3 days:

30 Jan: 7736 total infections (+29%); 12167 total suspected (+32%)
29 Jan: 5997 (+32%); 9239 (32%)
28 Jan: 4537 (+66%); 6973 (20%)

The transmission rate is unclear but probably self-sustaining (R0>1).

Mortality rate unclear (can look at deaths per officially diagnosed case but deaths per actual infection could differ significantly).

Russia closed land border. Various airlines suspending all flights to/from China (British Air, American Airlines, Canada Air, Lufthansa).

I'm not looking to defend all aspects of the WHO. I'm saying they know a lot more than you about this outbreak and that they didn't decide to lie during the press conference because they were paid off. The teams of scientists consolidating data and producing the reports and informing the DG (who I agree is a corrupt diversity hire) watched that press conference too. And unless you think thousands of WHO scientists are in on this scam to downplay the severity of the virus to please China, the conference could not have been as anti-alarmist as it was without a huge outcry from WHO scientists. Also, there is no point in the WHO painting a hopeful picture at that press conference if they know it's going to turn out to be the next Spanish Flu.

I wish you had a more concrete prediction so I could prove how wrong you are in your '30% chance of 100k dead' claim, since I don't want to spend any more time going back and forth with you as you repeat the same things you've said over and over and accuse everyone of being an incompetent clown. But when this virus blows over two months from now and goes down as a meaningless blip, I hope you'll reconsider that maybe that 30% was more like 0.3%.

If you think about it WHO has only one option and that is to say good things. Anything else would possibly start a global level panic.

I'm not saying that the virus being a big deal is a sure thing, but from a game theory type mindset there is obviously only one move. That's paint a rosy picture. Could be truth, could be lies.

i think this upward/steady trend continues unless one of the following happens:

1) spike in cases in top 5 non-wuhan chinese city above predicted number (which says to me it gets out of control in all their major cities and it hurts GDP)
2) a spike in a developing area (indian subcontinent, south america)
3) the US (or a cabal of major countries) cuts off air travel to china. italy and el salvador are the only two afaik that have legit cut all ties.

in any of these cases it's a massive GDP hit and i think we see some additional short term volatility. as it stands, market seems confident that even though we're gonna see an exponential spike in # of cases in china, if they can contain it in china and apply the quarantines we're looking at maybe a 1% hit to their GDP but they'll bounce through it. that's the optimistic outlook. the dire outlook is that 800MM people end up getting it or they have to quarantine so hard they get a worse hit to GDP, at which point they have a lot of bonds tied to stock prices and there's a weird banking contagion thing where the PBOC has to step in.

what's 2% of 180MM?

Chinese Markets being closed are a big deal imo. I think we'll know sunday what people on the ground there think when they vote with their money.

lol thinking that scientists would speak up.

Look, here's the hard data:



Three major takeaways from this:

- In the province where it's had enough time to incubate and develop full disease symptoms (Hubei), 3% are dead, 13% are seriously ill, 5% are in critical condition.

- In other provinces, deaths are near zero so far.

- In international cases, there are zero deaths so far and only 2 serious.

It's very obvious what's going on here - it takes a long time to progress to serious pneumonia that causes hypoxia and complications, but >20% do and around 4% of all infections are ending up dead (giving half the critical to the dead column).

The absolute morons at the WHO had the temerity to claim that zero international deaths was a good sign. As if that meant anything at all. They are complete dickheads. It clearly takes time for deaths to happen and for it to get serious. The data from China's provinces proves that. Looking at the numbers out of Hubei in China above, it will be 2-3 weeks before sufficient spread and life-threatening development happens in the West that people start dying in numbers that will finally "alarm" the dickheads. At that point it will be spread too far to contain in open societies. China couldn't' do it and they shut down entire cities with authoritarian force.

It's very clear what's going on here. Heads are in the sand and none of the absolute losers who did that press conference want to risk crying wolf or sticking it to China's economy. The only hope to avoid millions dead is that asymptomatic spread is low enough that it's self limiting and can be contained the same way that SARS was. The data seems quite strongly against that thesis at this point.

For what it's worth I was around for SARS, swine flu, bird flu, etc and I called them a joke/overblown because none of had the features that this does - high death rates, extreme severe illness rates, PLUS flu-like asymptomatic spread. I've never been worried about a pandemic before.

At least for the past 30 years, severe epidemics have marked bottoms in the stock market:



Unless this is going to be something like the Spanish Flu or AIDS, I think all dips should be bought. I am begrudgingly swinging in and out of levered long positions because Fed > all at the moment, and I say this even though I am waiting and eager to go balls deep short with a large pile of cash.

Keep in mind that none of the algos, corporate buyback platforms nor money printers can get sick from the virus, so "THEY" will happily buy everything panicky and dying humans have to sell.

The WHO figures could be inaccurate for any number of reasons, not only to appease China.

Thanks for the insight.

One thing I wonder about with regard to the table is why they chose April 2003 to represent SARS. Is it the best analogue for the situation now? SARS occurred over a period of months (~9). Why April 2003, given we are only one month in to this coronavirus.

If you instead choose December 2012 or Jan 2013 as the point of comparison the figures are not good.