China is upset with the US, following weekend of dour-sounding coronavirus headlines and a painful reopening for mainland markets, where more than 3,200 stocks traded limit-down in the worst rout since the country’s equity bubble burst in 2015.
Only 162 stocks out of 4,000 listed names managed a gain Monday. Li Changmin, managing director at Snowball Wealth in Guangzhou, marveled at the rapidity of the drop, telling Bloomberg it was astonishing how quickly things… well, how quickly things snowballed. “The selloff was so quick and intense”.
It sure was, Li. You can gawk at more visuals here, but suffice to say it may well take a week for folks to unwind what they want to sell. The CSI 300 sank through both its 100- and 200-day moving averages in the space of minutes on Monday.
Meanwhile, at an irritated presser, the incomparable Hua Chunying told reporters that the US has “inappropriately overreacted” to the virus situation.
“The US government hasn’t provided any substantial assistance to us”, the famously chippy foreign ministry spokeswoman remarked. “But it was the first to evacuate personnel from its consulate in Wuhan, the first to suggest partial withdrawal of its embassy staff, and the first to impose a travel ban on Chinese travelers”.
The Trump administration on Friday announced a raft of emergency measures, including travel bans. Trump last week claimed he spoke to Xi about the virus but a person familiar with the president’s calls said that as of the moment he made the comments, the two leaders hadn’t talked since December.
Hua went on to suggest that America’s decision to ban entry for foreign nationals who have recently traveled to China may constitute a violation of civil rights.
WHO has heaped praise on Beijing for Xi’s response to the outbreak, and other countries have been generally supportive, even as the US is hardly alone in pondering travel restrictions and evacuating personnel.
“Most countries appreciate and support China’s efforts to fight against the novel coronavirus, and we understand and respect them when they adopt or enhance quarantine measures at border entry”, Hua when on to say. “But in the meantime, some countries, the US in particular, have inappropriately overreacted, which certainly runs counter to WHO advice”.
Although Trump’s efforts are understandable from a public health perspective, Hua is correct to say that the White House’s emergency measures run counter to WHO, something Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus reiterated on Monday.
“There is no reason for any measures that unnecessarily interfere with international travel and trade”, he said, echoing comments from last week’s emergency declaration. “The rule of the game is solidarity, solidarity, solidarity, but we see this missing in many corners”.
Current vulnerability is to the news cycle and how the political / media resources choose to spin all this. It seems almost anything can flip this (as Charlie says ) at this point into a relatively major event… So we ponder if that is to anyone’s advantage ??….One thing seems certain is that there will be a trailing event which will be the numbers coming at the start of the second quarter…That assumes the corona virus is largely contained… So how that news is manipulated and rationalized takes the helm at that point in time…Remembering this is an inflated market might be a good idea about now….(not BTFD)