Active Covid cases is the key to spreading. In the USA, active...

Active Covid cases is the key to spreading. In the USA, active cases continue to rise, albeit more slowly now than a month ago. Keep in mind the virus incubation period. The general view seems to be that this can all be explained by increased testing NOT expanded cases. I’m not so sure.

There’s also talk bubbling through that some Republican US States (Texas, Florida in particular) are falsifying/delaying Covid reporting. If true that’s messy and makes it hard to read the real picture. OpenTable data suggest that US consumers are moving slowly back (bookings still remain down YoY 75-90%), and Google/Apple movement data suggests that driving is up, as is time spent in parks, but that ‘retail therapy’ is stubbornly slow. Data coming out of China suggests the Supply side (i.e. Manufacturing) is rebuilding faster than the Demand side (i.e. Consumers); a similar dynamic would not auger well for the US given ~70% of their economy is driven by consumers.

Due to these and other factors I think your timeline of “end of May/1st week of June” might be a little premature. This will all take time to ‘bake’; people buying stocks now need to get fearful again. My view continues to be that we bounce around +/- 5-10% week to week (roughly between 2750-3050 on the S&P500) for a month or so until the end August/early September when we start to see Q2 economic and business results, as well as clear data on Virus spreading (so called 2nd wave) and new treatments (i.e. Remdesivir, etc.).

P.S. Anyone who thinks we get a vaccine in 2020 is delusional. Best case is Q1 2021, more likely mid-end ‘21 (if we are lucky).