Market update – 1April 2020BY ANDREW CLIFFORD, 01 APR...

Market update – 1April 2020

BY ANDREW CLIFFORD, 01 APR 2020

Coronavirusand economic update

Theimpact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) is now being felt by all of us on a dailybasis, with WFH, social distancing, self-isolation and lockdown likely vyingfor words of the year.

Theimpact of less interactions is leading to a much slower transmission of thevirus, which gives some optimism about the transient nature of the majoreconomic impact – that being a partial withdrawal of labour from the system. Weare not yet at the stage of discussing "back to work" globally but ifthe data trends continue that will start to be where the conversation moves.

What isnot known at this stage is how coming out of lockdown works – China will offerus a case study. Our experience in the region, coupled with the input on theother big variable, medical science, from our resident virologist Bianca Ogden,gives us two key focal points to interpret.

In Asia,China is steadily getting back to work and re-opening from lockdown, thoughexport businesses could suffer from the global slump. We are at least,primarily focused on domestic businesses. It is also clear that while NE Asia(China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan) and Singapore have managed this well, there isincreasing evidence that S&SE Asia (India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Philippinesand Malaysia) are areas of concern.

Biancais encouraged that diagnostic test capacity is continuing to expand withadditional tests receiving emergency approval in the US,which is rapidly becoming the epicentre of this pandemic. More papers areemerging highlighting the learnings from Italy, with the clear point being madethat ICU capacity both needs to increase and to be managed countrywide.

Market and portfolio update

The lastweek has seen some markets rebound quite hard from oversold levels, but wewould caution that this is consistent with bear market behaviour and it isunlikely that markets race higher from here.

Withthis in mind, we continue to have a cautious stance, focusing first onprotecting capital and second on finding new opportunity. We expect there to bea time to become more aggressive and can reduce shorts quickly as needed.

Asell-off of this magnitude throws up opportunity and the investment team is workinghard on a number of ideas.

Ourshorts remain a combination of a broad mix of indices around the world and acollection of individual stocks where we believe the fundamentals arechallenged or where we think they have, as yet, defied gravity.

At theclose of business on Tuesday, 31 March 2020, our invested position across thePlatinum Trust Fund’s and Platinum Global Fund was as follows:

	Fund	Long %	Short %	Net %	AUD exposure %
1	International	84	(24)	60	10
2	Unhedged	87	n/a	87	0
3	Asia	78	(10)	68	10
4	Europe	97	(12)	84	19
5	Japan	81	(24)	57	0
6	Int’l Brands	97	(32)	65	5
7	Int’l Health Care	93	(5)	88	11
8	Int’l Technology	86	(2)	84	7
9	Global	86	n/a	86	10

www.platinum.com.au/Insights-Tools/The-Journal/Market-update-%E2%80%93-1-April-2020

US and Europe, becoming the epicentre of thispandemic with cases still increasing and need to be managed.

www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/