What’s the pandemic trade
Sooner or later, there will be another country with a coronavirus breakout. Right now authorities are scrambling in South Korea, Iran and Italy.
Given that it started in China, two of those three countries were not at all where you would have expected it to land next. Scarier is that Indonesia — which is a top destination for Chinese travelers — still has zero confirmed cases. US diplomats are increasingly critical of the testing and preparations in the country.
So what if the next big outbreak is in Indonesia? Or what if it’s Australia? Or Canada?
If that happens, I expect the market to sell those currencies. Market reactions are imperfect and that’s an understandable response.
At the same time, there is a certain point where the market comes to realize that the virus is unstoppable. I don’t know if that is 5 countries or 25.
What will matter first is how quickly the case count rises. If it rises 100x like it has in Italy this week, that’s a clear sign of local transmission but the market will react more-quickly and the news comes in dribs-and-drabs.
So you can’t sell on the first case and it’s always tough to get immediate details of where people had recently visited. So it’s a situation where you have to wait for the numbers to rise, but how many cases do you need? There’s no easy answer.
A lot of trades play out like that around the virus because the information is so sketchy. If you told me there was a breakout in Indonesia, I’d sell the rupiah but the reality is that the information is lumpy.
I’d argue that it’s a better idea to focus on the global impacts and reactions than try to pin it down place-by-place.
