I'm not tracking news and markets closely now that I'm just waiting.
Thanks MustacheAndaHalf.
am I reading this correct, you are expecting another dip?
baz
I only peeked at the news in response to AdrianC's post. When I had a chunk of my portfolio outside the market, I diligently paid attention to the news and how my predictions were doing. Now that I'm 100% equities, I'm just taking whatever the market dishes out between now and recovery.
Earlier, I predicted headlines. Recently, everyone knows "flatten the curve" with a diagram of exponential growth being flattened. People overlay Italy or China onto U.S. data. To me, markets both understand exponential growth and are no longer panicking. I don't have the advantage, so I'm back to watching efficient markets incorporate information.
You can replicate my earlier method: divide the total number of cases by the previous total. Typically it's a day apart, and you include all prior cases. You wind up with a number near +50%, near +30%, or 10-20% range. The closer the growth factor is to 0%, the closer the outbreak is to being over. I'll run an example:
Sun 139,061... Mon 160,530... Tues 184,770... Wed 210,770...
Mon growth: 160530 / 139061 = 15%
Tue growth: 184770/160530 = 15%
Wed growth: 210770/184770 = 14%
Note NY dominates this data: 84k of 184k cases are in New York, almost half. So that can mask smaller outbreaks that are growing fast. But once NY halts COVID-19 growth, that frees up significant resources to be used against those smaller outbreaks.
That doesn't reveal by itself if markets will be up or down the next few days, but it shows there's a trend of defeating COVID-19's spread using social distancing and increased testing (the U.S. has performed more than 1.1 million COVID-19 tests so far). My 100% equities position probably biases me, but at least you can check the data and use the approach that helped me previously. Just be warned that everyone has some version of it now, and mine is probably primitive by comparison.