Stock Market Keeping Score in the Three-Front War Against the Virus

We are still in the midst of VWW-II, the second world war against the coronavirus. VWW-I occurred from 1918-19 as the world battled the Spanish Flu pandemic. It is estimated that about 500 million people, or one-third of the world’s population, became infected with the Spanish Flu virus. The number of deaths is estimated at 50 million worldwide, with about 675,000 in the US. In some ways, the damage from VWW-I exceeded the destruction resulting from WW-I.

So far during VWW-II, 4.1 million people have been infected globally and more than 283,000 have died. Potentially just as deadly is the economic impact of the government-imposed shutdowns around the world to enforce social distancing to reduce the spread of the virus. Millions of people are out of work, and hundreds of thousands of businesses are at risk of going out of business. The resulting human toll in poverty, mental illness, suicides, spousal and child abuse, murders—as well as deaths from non-COVID-related diseases going untreated now—could easily exceed the case count and death count directly attributable to the virus once the war is over.

The stock market is probably the best scorekeeper in the battle between humans and the coronavirus. The virus outbreak in China first made the headlines on Friday, January 24. The S&P 500 dropped 2.5% by the following Monday’s close, but then moved higher to peak at a record 3386.15 on February 19 (Fig. 1). It then plunged 33.9% in just 33 days to 2237.4 on March 23 (Fig. 2). That was the fastest bear market in history, assuming that it ended on March 23, as I believe. It certainly correctly anticipated the economic retreat and calamity that have resulted from the government-imposed lockdowns around the world.

The question now is whether the 30.9% rally in the S&P 500 since the March 23 low through Friday’s close of 2929.80 is correctly predicting a remarkable victory against the virus in coming months. VWW-I has been a three-front war, with a health, economic, and financial front. Lots of progress was made on the financial front since the Fed launched its B-52 bombers and carpet-bombed the markets with liquidity starting on March 23. Undoubtedly, that explains most of the rally in stock prices since then.

I believe that the S&P 500 may consolidate for a while around 2900 until we see significant signs of progress on the health and economic fronts. The lockdowns have successfully imposed social distancing, resulting in the flattening of the case and death curves. Now, as governments are starting to open their economies, there are likely to be flare-ups in so-called hot spots or even widespread second waves of infection. Progress on the health and economic fronts is likely to be in fits and starts, giving investors the jitters.

We saw a bit of those jitters in Monday's trading action, when South Korea's capital closed down more than 2,100 bars and other nightspots Saturday because of a new cluster of coronavirus infections, Germany scrambled to contain fresh outbreaks at slaughterhouses, and Italian authorities worried that people were getting too friendly at cocktail hour during the country's first weekend of eased restrictions.

Meanwhile, the best way to win VWW-II would be to discover a weapon of mass destruction to destroy the virus. Progress is being made on the health front in devising tests, cures, and vaccines. Consider the following recent developments:

(1) Tests. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted emergency-use authorization for Abbott Laboratories’ new coronavirus test that detects COVID-19 antibodies, the company announced Monday. Abbott plans to ship nearly 30 million tests—which can indicate whether a person has had COVID-19 in the past and was either asymptomatic or recovered—in May and will have the capacity to ship 60 million tests in June, the company announced in a press release.

(2) Cures. The S&P 500 rallied 2.7% on April 29, when Gilead Sciences released a study conducted by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. It found that the company’s experimental drug, remdesivir, was the first treatment shown to have even a small effect against COVID-19. The median time that hospitalized COVID-19 patients on remdesivir took to stop needing oxygen or exit the hospital was, at 11 days, four days shorter than those who were on placebo. Critics argue that the reason we have shut our whole society down is not to prevent COVID-19 patients from spending a few more days in the hospital. It is to prevent patients from dying, which the study did not address. (See the May 11 article on statnews.com, “Inside the NIH’s controversial decision to stop its big remdesivir study.”)

 Dr. David Agus, a Professor of Medicine and Engineering at the University of Southern California was interviewed on May 7 by Howard Stern. He acknowledged that remdesivir isn’t a miracle cure. But he claimed that if the drug is taken as soon as symptoms appear and a test confirms the infection, the outcome for the patient is likely to be less severe and shorter illness and less chance of death. He compared it to taking Tamiflu right away when flu symptoms occur.

 On Tuesday, Gilead Sciences announced the signing of licensing agreements with five generic drug makers to manufacture remdesivir in 128 countries, including the US. The deal is “royalty-free” until the World Health Organization says the COVID-19 outbreak is no longer a global health crisis or “until a pharmaceutical product other than remdesivir or a vaccine is approved to treat or prevent Covid-19, whichever is earlier,” the company said.

(3) Vaccines. There are more than 100 different COVID-19 vaccine candidates in various stages of development. So far, eight are already in human trials. Experts are “cautiously optimistic” that the world will get a vaccine, according to a May 9 Deseret News article, which added: “They just don’t know when.” It also reported: “But there’s a big difference between identifying a successful COVID-19 vaccine in a lab and having a studied-at-length, licensed vaccine available in every corner pharmacy. The entire process is laden with potential setbacks—not the least of which is finding enough vials to hold the life-saving serum.”

Here is the real problem with fast-tracking a vaccine: “The next step would be getting emergency use authorization from the FDA, which would allow policymakers to offer the vaccine to health care workers, first responders and essential workers like grocery store clerks and delivery truck drivers. Yet never before has the US vaccinated millions under emergency use authorization.” In the past, vaccine development was “measured in decades—not months, with each step taking years, not weeks.”

Meanwhile, Reuters reported that French drugmaker Sanofi SA said on Wednesday that it is working with European regulators to speed up access to a potential coronavirus vaccine in Europe. Sanofi, whose Pasteur division has an established track record of producing influenza vaccines, has teamed up with British rival GlaxoSmithKline Plc last month to come up with a candidate it hopes will be ready next year. The companies have received financial support from the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) of the U.S. Health Department. Given the support from BARDA, doses produced in the United States are expected to go to US patients first, a prospect that has raised concern in Europe.

Dr. Ed is one of LinkedIn's 2019 Top Voices in economy & finance. Institutional investors may sign-up for a complimentary trial of his research service here. His book, Predicting the Markets: A Professional Autobiography is on Amazon. His new book, Fed Watching for Fun & Profit, is available there too.

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