Market hysteria is not all down to coronavirus
Is this really about a virus? Oil has plunged 30 percent, the S&P Index seven percent. What is happening on the markets today has less the feel of a rational reaction to world events than one of the periodic panics which grips world markets — with coronavirus a mere excuse for a sell-off which was perhaps coming anyway. The deadliest words for world markets are not ‘coronavirus’ and ‘Covid-19’ but ‘decade-long bull market’. The latter idea has planted in many investors’ heads that the good times could not have gone on much longer — there had to be a correction or crash. It is true, as well, that the US, in common with many developed countries, has not suffered a recession for over 10 years. That, too, feels unnatural.
