Coronavirus impact on 2020 sa
Anyone else sensing a doom and gloom situation where 2020 sa programs are delayed or cancelled due to coronavirus? I have already heard of lots of college’s study abroad programs cancelled in Asia and more recently Italy. If Japan cancels summer olympics, anything is possible.
Interested in knowing as well. I would imagine most SA are at school in the states?
It's over
Just my take, the coronavirus is overblown as fuck. The latest dramatic media angle is that the flu death rate is only 0.1% while coronavirus death rate is 20x worse at 2%.
Just one problem, the flue rate is for all flu infections while the coronavirus rate is for confirmed cases. Confirmed cases are generally much worse, as the limited testing supplies force them to only test sicker people.
So we have a selection bias issue where coronavirus death rate is using a sicker denominator. Now you may wonder, how powerful is that bias? Well the flu death rate jumps to 7% among hospitalized flue patients. A 70x jump. So, yeah, pretty biased.
If 0.1% of all flu infections die, and 7% of serious flu infections die, and confirmed coronavirus cases are somewhere between mild and serious . . well then that 2% death rate sure does look awfully in line with the overall range for flu.
Will take time for media and public to absorb this among all the hysteria. Right now folks are actually dumb enough to say it’s a bad thing that for every confirmed case there are many more mild, unconfirmed cases, while simultaneously touting the 2% death rate as high. Can’t have it both ways.
When the dust settles, people will calm down. Banks are calmer than most as I can tell you they didn’t cut summer classes too much during the financial crisis, a much more direct event for them. They cut a bit, and especially outside IBD. But IBD was only cut somewhat.
Thanks God, someone with common sense.
For me all this nonsense is the definitive proof that most of the people is completely ignorant and that they like to be manipulated and/or told how to think. It looks like it's difficult for most of them to think by themselves.
Love people wearing the masks as a preventative measure while the CDC says it is essentially pointless
Why would China do strict quarantine for >700 million people if “it’s just the flu bro”
Without going to far afield into conspiracy theories, I'll just say that China has plenty of ulterior motives for restricting people's ability to go about their lives freely, gather in public places, etc.
If any country quarantined their major cities, they'd also be quarantining half or more of their population. So 700m is a big number no matter how you slice it, but I also think people are choosing to use that number for dramatic effect whereas it would sound less dramatic to just say half the country or the country's urban population.
I agree with a lot of what you are saying, but a couple factors not mentioned.
Hopefully we get info that the death rate is much lower, a vaccine is created, or the spread of the disease does not accelerate. But there are real concerns if all three here continue.
I would guess that one of the three break and we end up fine. My bigger concern is how fast that happens because in the interim business will slow down since our only method to stop spreading the disease right now is to lock ourselves at home which will crater corporate profits
Edit: thought this was the thread talking about impact on markets. My bad. Your SA offer will be fine. Barring shit hitting the fan and huge recession, I wouldn’t spend time worrying about it.
I was starting to panic then read your last two line lol
Those are all great points.
Regarding recovery rate specifically. Comparing deaths to recoveries is hands down the most logical way to do things. But I haven’t done this because I haven’t found any recovery data that is even remotely reliable. I would find someone tracking recoveries, and then spot check a few of them (like local news of a recovery in Seattle or whatever) and they would be missing. All of them would have recoveries about equal to deaths for a 50% death rate.
So, if you are able to direct me to Hopkins data that would be much appreciated. Thanks.
Wait why is it different for the flu? Isn't flu numbers based on confirmed cases too? How do you know how many people have flu infections?
Great question. Flu is based on total infections, which are estimated. Almost nobody is actually tested for flu.
Think you're being too confident here. Flu has both cures specifically designed to combat it and vaccines, which can prevent rapid spreading.
The problem with the COVID-2019 is that it's more contagious than the flu while at the same time causing more infected patients to be in serious conditions and therefore require hospitalization. Once the healthcare system is flooded with infected patients, the fatality rate could rise much higher; also, people who need medical treatments for other illness/disease might no longer have access to them in a overwhelmed healthcare system. This is the scenario we should really worry about.
This was exactly what happened in Wuhan, currently in Iran and Italy.
There’s a cure for the flu other than the vaccine?
What? You think Coronavirus is just another flu and is "overblown as fuck"? Hahaha. You're an idiot, just like your president, and you should be kicked out of pre-med before you do any more damage to your society. I live in Beijing and most companies have already made their entire workforce work remotely from home. Japan and Korea are doing the same, although to a different degree. Do you guys in the States even see whats happening in Europe? Let's see how well you guys deal with this "overblown as fuck" flu :) Sure will be a fun watch from across the pacific.
Korea has the most tests per capita now, and is reporting a death rate of 0.7%. With more tests, the death rate will converge towards the death rate of seasonal flu. China did a great job, given very limited info about the new virus, but at what cost? I don't think US needs to freeze their economy
Maybe brush up on the English before recruiting season.
You idiot even if death rate is in line with the flu if it's 10x as infectious, as you can infer from shit going on in Italy, it's going to be just as bad.
Short this moron's career.
Shorting my career to date hasn't been a great move but I'll be honest, you wouldn't be bankrupt yet if you shorted my career. You'd just be behind.
What's your support for 10x as infectious?
How many Americans do you predict will die when all is said and done? The consensus of whitepapers that have driven the intense shutdown response were all in the range of 500k to 1m Covid deaths in the US between now and vaccine (so next 18 months).
Are you roughly in line with that . . 500k to 1m deaths?
Because I'm confident even 10k will never happen. Maybe not even 1k. And when I'm proven right, those who called me stupid will have some excuse about I wasn't really right, because the low deaths are reflective of extreme measures taken. Blah blah blah. I'll be right.
But if you care to make it interesting, maybe we can arrange something. DMs open
But you haven't factored in the severity of coronavirus vs flu. Most people have built immunity to the flu or at least have the choice to go get a flu shot and be safe for the season, but obviously we don't have that for COVID-19. Plus in even mild cases you can develop life-long ailments like permanent respiratory damage.
That's true. I wouldn't say it wasn't being factored in. My only point was, the math should be done properly. Covid is more serious than flu, but how do we quantify it. There are many ways to quantify it . . % that die, % with respiratory damage etc. But the media (especially at the time of my post, 6 weeks ago) were very fixated on death rate. And my only point is, if you're going to report a death rate, do the math right. Don't compare apples to oranges, which is what was being done.
The problem is not the death rate but how quickly the virus spreads. Take the example of the South Korean patient 31. She went to two church services before being diagnosed and now 1,300 church members have flu-like symptons, of which hundreds have been diagnosed with the coronavirus. This happened in a matter of days.
Japan just announced that it would close all elementary, junior high, and high schools through the end of March in order to limit the potential spread of coronavirus.
Will banks risk that interns will bring the virus to its headquarters and infect its IB teams? Will banks require that interns take body temperature day 1 of internship? Will banks ask if intern has traveled outside of the country (or require that intern not travel) in the prior 30 days of start date?
I mean I could see some of those measures being taken if the virus spreads to Nyc, but highly doubt anything happens otherwise
Whether or not the coronavirus is overblown, losing close to 15% of the equity market in one week has ramifications for IBD revenue. Issuances, especially equity (although higher yielding debt products as well) will be put off. Companies will suffer from supply chain disruptions etc. The impact may well be temporary but none of this is positive.
Is the ronavirus sexually transmitted as well? I want to clap some MD cheeks.
I'm definitely worried as well. Anything is possible, especially a low return offer rate
Might make you're summer a little busier if you're working in Restructuring.
My placement day in mid April just got cancelled. HR said we have to participate virtually which is a real bummer
Announced today (not IB but I'm sure that will come soon):
JPMorgan Chase has begun sending hundreds of its traders and salespeople in New York and London to backup locations as Wall Street girds itself for the arrival of coronavirus.
The bank plans on moving approximately half its sales and trading staff in New York and London to a pair of backup locations near each city.
Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/05/jpmorgan-moving-traders-to-backup-offic…
Hmm I wonder if all the BB's will start doing this. Definitely a little worrying. Could SA's internships be moved to backup locations?
A few of us were chatting on the floor and speculating that there might not be an office for interns to go to as this spirals out of control. Most likely would just bypass the internship and extend offers to everyone / no one. Anyway that’s our speculation
Fuck me that would be insane lmao...for either choice...
that'd be a dream - if they just offered everyone
Not sure why people feel so confident (american exceptionalism in play? No clue), but the virus will hit America harder than other developed nations because the US has
1) a lot of homeless people (US only issue) 2) a lot of people without sick leave (US only issue) 3) a lot of people without health insurance (US only issue) 4) a lot of illegal immigrants who are afraid of ICE (US only issue) 5) no government subsidized COVID-19 testing (US only issue) 6) An administration that mostly downplay the threat (US only issue)
and all of these issues will aid the spread of COVID-19. This virus spreads really, really fast. Hubei, China reported its first case in mid Jan, and its 68k cases in mid Feb, and this is even AFTER Wuhan city (with over 11mm population, just a little bigger than NYC) was shutdown in late Jan.
At this point, we are in the dark of how many cases exist in the US. Remember when China first reported that there are ~150 cases and BBC and CNN reported that China under reported should really be around thousands of cases based on their disease model? Yes, turned out it was true. China just didn't have enough testing kits back then. The US is literarily repeating the same shit that China went through just a mount ago. We have close to 20 death now in the US and only over a hundred cases? come on. there should be thousands of cases. I hope I am wrong, but I know I am likely to be right. Once the outbreak hit the news, fear will further spread, and Trump will change his tone because he has the weight between stock market and crisis management
As you guys sit there and boost about how the death rate is closer to flu, the WHO already adjusted death rate upward, to 3.4%. But you do have a point. Death rate is not the real issue here. It's how fast it spreads, and the fear it brought among people. It's 3.4% for everybody, but when you are sick, you either die, or you live, and it's not up to you. Think about it.
The 3.4% death rate isnt for all infections, it’s only for those sick enough to test. I explain earlier in the thread that this sampling bias likely has a huge effect.
The best estimate of death rate for all infections is 0.3%. Yes it can change, and yes it’s based on limited info. But it’s the best estimate.
Hopkins epediemiologist spoke at MS event earlier this week and gave a range of 0.1% to 0.5% as their estimate for the US.
Korea death rate is 0.5% right now and while you’ve already highlighted many good reasons why US won’t do as well as Korea, consider also that even Korea isn’t testing their mildest cases which would cut the death rate even lower.
You say death rate doesn’t matter . . yeah at the levels you’re estimating, I agree that it doesn’t. If it’s 3% or 4% doesn’t matter, that’s high enough to make people change a lot of behavior.
But if it’s 0.3% I think that’s a very different ballgame. Precautions aren’t free. People have things to do and at some point the risk is too small to go through all the restrictions. I think that will prove out in the US.
What still concerns me is that if it makes a lot of folks sick, not dead but sick, yes that’s very disruptive. But I haven’t seen ICU rates that are clean and reliable.
It’s interesting, the folks who tell me that I’m irresponsible for questioning the misused official death rates are always like “trust the official data, no adjustments or conjecture allowed!!”. But then when it moves to ICU/hospitalization rates they want me to trust very flimsy data.
Will happily dive into any solid ICU data that anyone may have.
I think the death rate will be much lower in the end. As of right now we are only counting the people who have tested postive for COVID19 and the postive tests who have died from the virus. I have a strong belief that there are way more people who have the virus and do not even know it. I think the denomintator is much greater than we currently think it is, which would make the fatality rate go down. We won't know any of this until way further down the road when they can study the antibodies and really learn more about the virus/estimate how many people actually got it.
My conclusions are the same. Other items include 1) social stigma for wearing masks 2) high penetration of antiscience belief among general populace and politicians (antivax, climate change) 3) very reactionary cultural mindset vs other cultures 4) weak trust in authority 5) civil liberties and lack of quarantine controls 6) weak tsa and border control and high quantity of flights daily 7) normalcy bias in the population / exceptionalism mindset (greatest hc in the world, etc)
Case in point for the item regarding testing incoming travelers:
https://twitter.com/julialindau/status/1235714275752267776?s=19
Ok now you guys are starting to scare me. Will this really effect the process/return offers for those in NYC? Or this largely overblown, or rather would the real concern just be how to market has been reacting so poorly recently and this would affect SA offers most? I know it’s literally out of my control and there’s nothing I can do but I can’t help but begin to panic.
You are so screwed. Sorry buddy.
I hope all the interns fail miserably in their career goals! Lol
.
If anyone has any legitimate insight into how this will effect SA internships/ return offers please comment. I think most of us are panicking and would like any bit of clarity.
I have a very numbers approach to the issue, I am thinking of the following - this is not very polically correct though.
Here's the thing I don't get: - The death rate is actually heavily skewed toward eldedrly people. Most if not 99.99% of the active population (below 60-65 yrs old), has nothing to worry about unless they already have heath issues. - The fact that it may kill depending on estimates up to 130m of elederly people will reduce the strain that developped economies have due to pension deficits. Furthermore there is a wealth concentration for people of that age. So effectively should it kill people that are retired, it will 1) reduce the financial strain and 2) increase assets of younger people and should help them access property ownership etc.
Thus unless people and the economy just shuts down (because yes most politicians are in the range where they could die so they are scared of it), most of us on this forum from students all the way to Directors (let's not include MD's in case there is this one lifer that is over 60) have nothing to worry about and should keep living normally and we should be all fine. But because there is this over reaction by everyone - traditonal human behavior btw - the impact will be much greater than if it was actually presented as a bit worse than usual flu and people kept doing whatever they do.
All of y’all downplaying the impact this will have on the society are not focusing on the key issues- how are people and govts going to react? For heavy affected areas we are seeing massive seizures in economic activity and movement of people. They are shutting down manufactured supply chains, and things like hospitality (vacancy rates in Milan and Venice in the stratosphere), transportation, retail, discretionary consumer, theme parks, sporting events are seeing major fallout.
What happens when these corporations have upcoming debt service they cannot handle? They go bk and credit investors go into a panic. They are less forgiving on others tripping covenants and suddenly the whole credit markets go into shock.
Permanent damage to certain firms with investor and capital provider trust burnt. Even if there are govt actions to provide bailouts it will be extremely painful.
Note I am long SPX puts with a substantial amount of my portfolio as of the post Super Tuesday news so I am affected by my own confirmation biases.
What was the Super Tuesday news? I thought it was just Biden doing well, you're saying that was bad for market . . or maybe you're saying that the market took it as good but should've taken it as bad?
The market decided to rally on the Super Tuesday Biden win and the prior day 50bps rate cut and I thought the index was fundamentally mispriced given the uncertainty regarding near term cash flows so I bought cheaper puts that I could have otherwise
You lost me at covenants
Is that because so much for the credit market is cov lite?
Lenders won't go into panic, because it's an economic shock due to force majeure and not negligence / incompetence / a broken business model. This isn't a credit crisis a la subprime, where it was clear that the underlying business model was rotten.
Simplistically speaking, the consumer business model works as follows - as long as people don't get sick en masse (like it's been proven now), they consume. When they suddenly get sick en masse, they can't consume anymore, but the point is that people are heavily inclined not to get sick. The whole insurance industry wouldn't exist if this basic consumer premier wasn't satisfied.
The financial system will be fine with respect to the credit markets going into shock. Since the crisis we have the PDCF, CPFF, TALF, PMCCF, etc. all to backstop corporate and bank lending needs. There will be restructuring and defaults but not another 2008.
Well yeah I wrote that before they cut rates a second time
Ugghhhh. Amherst college is shutting down. Students told to pack up and leave like they are leaving for the summer. Wtf
Not looking good for summer internships
Summer internships could very well be canceled.
Just ask any analyst who found himself at Bear Sterns, Lehman, Merrill etc in 2008. It's shitty but Merrill for instance told 95% of their analyst class to take a hike. For investment bankers, I know it's a hard reality to accept but the reality is that M&A has been living on borrowed time, and now rent is due. S&T isn't the only division in decline -- it's just that HFs were the first to cannibalize their business (and S&T by extension) in the run-up to 2008, bankers just had the next decade to do it to themselves.
Don't have any new information, just want to give some thoughts. It's important to note this is not just like 2008, a crisis that was caused directly by banks. Covid's full effect on profits is still yet to be seen, but it certainly won't be as drastic and wont cause the same exodus.
Schools, events, etc all shutting down right now is a good thing. The U.S. is finally starting to take the threat seriously and this bodes well for containment. Also, many are saying that the warmer weather should help stop the spread.
If anything, I'd be worried about commercial & corporate banking. Rates are going to 0% and companies are going to default on loans.
I dont think you incoming summers realize that IB provides some of the least job security out of any industry
My EB recently emailed summer analysts confirming they will not be canceling the internship (at worst WFH). Not exactly sure what it'll mean for return offers, but it was very reassuring.
Which EB is this? Just curious.
Any insights from the BBs and how they will react?
BobbybananamA asked the following:
"How are you getting to your extremely low estimate? NY has 100 coronavirus deaths and cases are doubling every 1.5 days (faster than most regions in the West). Despite the shelter-in-place order we haven't seen a slowdown in confirmed cases. How is it possible to get to 1,000 deaths in the US? To be clear the math here is that it only needs 3 doubles to get to 1,000, which should happen in about a week in New York. This is just New York and you are talking about the US"
A few comments:
Growth in confirmed cases won't reflect growth in infection, because we are so backlogged in testing. Best measure of growth IMHO is daily deaths. When deaths level off, its a signal that infections leveled off weeks earlier (some # of weeks between infection and death).
I am projecting 10,000 deaths at this time, not 1,000. I don't believe I ever said 1,000 but maybe I did. I do recall saying 5,000 earlier, which I've revised upward to 10,000. That is because of New York unfortunately becoming an outlier. In countries preceding us, we've seen outliers drive the totals. That means both outlier countries (Italy vs others) and outlier places within countries (Wuhan vs rest of China, Lombardy vs rest of Italy). I probably should've assumed a few US outliers ahead of time, but my whole point was thousands vs. hundreds of thousands.
Since NY is an outlier it doesn't change much about my projection for rest of US.
Separate from the above quote, you asked about death rate. If we're talking about # of infections that die, I think 0.3% is the sensible number. I get there by (i) starting with Korea's 1% CFR because they are the only country with broad testing, (ii) realizing that number is still too high because even there, mild cases not tested and (iii) taking midpoint of epidemiologists who ballpark it at 0.1-0.5%, since Korea is not inconsistent with that.
So how do I get a low estimate. Its a triangulation of several things:
My death rate is 0.3% while consensus whitepapers use at least 1%, often more. So that alone explains at least 70% of the difference between me and them.
Consensus whitepapers I've seen take an R-naught of 2.5 and extend it indefinitely. Critics have said this is dramatically wrong . . R-naught should start at 2.5 but move quickly toward the 1's because of early mild distancing and some folks developing immunity . . then drop below 1 for anyone infected after real distancing began.
Even the initial r-naught of 2.5 has been called too aggressive because its based on observations from the cruise ship and from Wuhan, two environments that are very different from the average American place. 2.5 is starting point for only the very dense cities in the US . . only NYC and certain neighborhoods of a few other big cities. Maybe 20% of Americans live in that kind of density.
Laundry list of smaller differences: warm weather shown in recent studies to be a factor, our lead time has allowed us to better flatten the curve than Italy, these new drugs will mitigate a bit, we stopped travel from China sooner than most.
The top two differences alone are huge and would be enough to explain why one person gets 500k and another person gets, say, 30k. Add in #3 and #4 and that gets me down to 10k.
I half thought you were a troll given your username but this is a sensible response.
1) Wouldn’t constraints on testing capacity imply that the true growth rate of cases is actually FASTER than the officially reported figure? In other words, my methodology (growing the implied cases 10-20 days ago by the change in reported cases over the last 10-20 days) is conservative. 2) What evidence do you have that the growth rate is slowing in Western countries and not accelerating? South Korea, China and Singapore have dramatically different cultural expectations than we do re personal freedoms. The observed data in every Western country supports a doubling time of 1.5-2.0 days. This essentially means everyone will get it before the end of the flu season. Your view on r naught is too theoretical - look at the observed data! Also projecting based on r naught sounds complicated - just use normal growth rates lol. 3) one way to get around this problem of testing capacity skewing your understanding of true growth rates is to compare the growth rate in reported cases to deaths 20 days later. When you do this exercise, I think you get a strong correlation. 4) How do you know that China death rate was not materially higher than what was reported? 5) using South Korea is a good idea to get the CFR but I still don’t think that accounts for the difference between our estimates. They had a CFR of about 1%, which is also what I am roughly assuming.
My #'s correspond to yours:
When testing constrained at first, and then suddenly unconstrained, cases immediately go from a handful to a ton. Just because of ability to diagnose. This makes # of cases not useful until that levels out a bit.
The daily deaths in the US are my proxy for case growth. Happy to hear other ideas, but per point #1 above can't use testing for a while because of that issue. US ex NY, I'm seeing growth rate start to decline . . i.e. daily deaths still going up, but going up at a declining rate. NYC still surging unfortunately, will have to wait and see when it begins to turn a corner.
I agree with that correlation, which I think means you'll find my answer in #2 above to be reasonable.
China death rate could have been materially higher than reported (because they lie) or materially lower (because they only test the sickest). Nothing I've said relies on their numbers. As I said previously my death rate is a triangulation of Korea and some soft estimates from experts. Each has problems, but together they're not bad.
Korea CFR is 1% but what I've read is that they only tested sick and medium cases. Other countries only tested the sickest, Korea took it a step further and tested the next class down (kinda sick, some symptoms, etc) but still didn't test people who were super mild or asymptomatic. So 1% has to come down somewhat.
Keep in mind that death rate is just one side. Another point that COVID-19 is freaking is it spreads SO FAST.
Apart from the death rate, collapse of medical system is severe as well. Doctors are heavily needed and they are not that many.
I have been worried about the spread of the virus in the US since the end of February. I saw many people not taking it seriously, and like some commenters above, making light of people wearing face masks early on. But look at the US today. The healthcare system is under high pressure, hundreds of deaths are being reported daily, and the infection rate is crazy. It's sad to see people being overconfident, and worse, criticizing those who were logical and took precautions before more reported numbers started rolling in.
I predict that the virus will peak in the US in April or May. As an incoming SA at a BB I am worried but hopeful. The internship may be delayed. Cancellation is the last resort. It's important to stay level-headed in these times and pay attention to the news everyday. Good luck to everyone.
It seems like a majority of predictions now call for a peak in mid-April and an "end" in June. With those projections, the cancellation of SA would be a bit extreme. I think a delay is probable.
Can we get someone's opinion on this updated? I'm unsure if I should be even signing for an apartment at this point.
I cannot speak to everyone's situation, but my HR contact has advised incoming summer analysts to hold off on housing for the time being, until they provide us with an update around mid April.
Are you at a BB/MM/EB? Just to get a little color?
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A lot of people have already gotten their housing as NYU housing is the most popular choice and their process ended a while ago. I would go ahead and get something through a university as it's getting late for housing and if the situation goes out of hand they will have to refund you because university summer housing is only available to students who have an internship in the city.
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