On the whole, I agree with you. Certainly people are not taking anywhere near the level of personal responsibility necessary, and making the crisis very much worse.
I also agree that the lion's share of the deaths and the economic disruption are still ahead of us. On balance, I'd say we are also not yet at the bottom and more falls in asset values are likely. However, trying to pick the bottom (or the top) is pretty well impossible. One can always try, sure, but your investment strategy needs to be predicated on failing to do that, and making money anyway.
On that basis, I make my first counter point. Valuations are extremely low pretty well everywhere. Maybe they will fall further, but any investor with a medium to long term horizon ought be salivating at these prices. Yes, risk is much higher: a number of what look like good investments now may well be companies that will fail. This environment is a very difficult one in which to be making any kind of predictions. However, these risks are always present and the mitigation strategies are the same: buy value, diversify.
I have a number of other counter points. This crisis is not structural. It's basically a supply shock. Or, you could say, it's a matter of the entire world of global commerce having collectively hit the "pause" button. Meanwhile, expenses continue. That's going to put the squeeze on businesses, and some will fail. However, when the virus abates, and abate it will at some point, the recovery is likely to be relatively swift. On this point, I note that rich-world governments everywhere are doing massive stimulus programmes, mostly with the goal of ensuring that people still have income. The consequence of this means that when the shops open again, people will go right back to spending.
I don't mean to suggest that this will just blow over and things will be back like they were. But stocks have fallen something close to half. Many of the better-value ones on offer now likely represent opportunities to make a two, three or even fourfold gain when the recovery comes, even if they do not attain their former valuations in the near future.
I would also point out, as a corollary to the "stuff is cheap at present" argument, that markets tend to anticipate future events. In this case, seeing mass deaths coming, markets quite rightly fell. As those deaths actually happen, the market isn't necessary going to fall a lot further in response. It has, as it were, already done that. Markets do also tend to over-react, both up and down. It would set no historical precedents if the current market collapse proves to be an over-reaction.
Further, central banks everywhere have created massive amounts of new money. This debases the value of the existing cash and drives up the value of assets. While a business post-Covid-19 might be fundamentally less valuable due to the damage inflicted to it, the price of that asset measured in dollars or Euros will be higher, as those currencies store relatively less value, and the business relatively more.
I am not buying in substantially at this point, but I expect I will be quite soon. Yes, America is facing a blood-bath of its own making. But China is close to disease-free now. And new cases are falling or stabilising in Germany and France, and on a generous reading, even in Italy. These countries will have to operate extremely carefully for a period once lock-down ends, or the virus will bounce back. But operate I expect they will to a certain extent. News from America in particular will likely provide some negative market sentiment in the weeks or months to come, and there will be flare-ups, but once we see a good handful of rich countries posting declining rates of new cases, I expect the bottom will have been reached. A massive disaster awaits Africa, South Asia, and other poverty-stricken regions, but, grim as it may be to point this out, that will have comparatively little impact on asset prices.
Watch the USA and the UK for the economically-consequential bad news, I suggest. These countries have squandered the lead that luck dealt them, and are going to pay a very high price.
But all crises do end...
Good luck everyone, and stay safe.
Expand
(20min delay)
