Monday Market Mayhem – Virus Suddenly Matters

833 infected.  

What?  That's low!  Well, that's just South Korea now and Italy has 215 cases, 154 in Japan and 89 in Singapore.  Even the US has 35 people infected now.  As I said last week, just because China seems to have things under control (though that is debateable), doesn't mean we won't get fresh global outbreaks in countries that will have a much harder time locking down their citizens to prevent the spread of the virus.

As you can see from the big chart, however, we "only" have 79,524 total cases and 25,163 have recovered so big progress in China – we just have to hope these other hot spots don't get out of hand.

The market crashed hard on the news as the Futures came back on from the weekend break last night – dropping 2.5% across the board in the US but we chose to go long on the Dow (/YM) Futures as they tested 28,200 in our Live Member Chat Room this morning – as that's the 2.5% line and should be bouncy by at least 0.5% or about 150 Dow points which would be good for morning gains of about $750 per contract if all goes well. 

Anything less than that is a weak bounce and, if so, it will be a strong indicator that the market wants to head 2.5% lower by Wednesday.  All in all though, it's just a minor correction in a massive rally that's been going on since early last year.  We've been very cautious with our entries so far and this is a nice sale the market is throwing so we can go out and do a bit of bargain shopping – if the virus issue isn't getting worse. 

Of course, Corporate Profits will be worse in Q1 and some countries may spiral into a Recession – because not every country gets to print money the way the G7 can.  China's President Xi warned yesterday that the virus epidemic is “still grim and complex,” calling for more efforts to stop the outbreak, revive industry and prevent the disease from disrupting spring planting of crops which, as I mentioned last week – is our next looming disaster (a year of hunger from missed farm production).  

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