I expect far WORSE in a month or so which is the scary part here because it is questionable how many companies will survive this long period of salaries with zero demand even with emergency aid packages. By next month the infection rate is calculated to barely having plateaued yet, with exponential rate until then.

I worry this will go so far that it’ll take a very long time for worldwide business to heal due to layoffs and wrecked personal finances killing demand even when we’re past the corona spike, and by then weapons like Fed’s lowered rates will have already been used.

I wouldn’t be surprised if we’re leaving this year with a -50% stock market value and 5-10 years for everything to get back to speed and valuation like it were.

It’s not even uncommon advice to not be heavily into the stock market if you have less than a >7 year savings horizon for these reasons.

If one assumes that the market was a powder keg waiting for a spark to explode, it doesn’t matter when the virus part of the equation clears up

I'm hoping for post-pandemic exuberance to lead us out of the economic problems.

If we hit pre-virus peak any time in 2020, I'm selling it all and buying gold. *

* I kid, I kid. Mostly...

Could you define 'much better'? Because we actually do know what the incubation period of this disease is, and we know how the virus has spread. It's a practical certainty that the spread of Covid is goingto gte worse, not better over the next month and that the mitigation strategies are going to completely tank some companies over that time.

I cannot define it because I don't know. I'm hopeful that there will be much more testing done which would shed light on many things. We also have a couple of countries with more positive news about the virus spread and in some places the number of deaths is still zero despite having thousands of cases.

If there's anything I learned about this virus is that my pessimistic predictions were way too optimistic.

Maybe in a year or two. In a month or so, covid will still be ramping up in various parts of the world.

This is going to take much longer than that to play out.

A month seems a bit optimistic. Even Trump himself was saying July or August. Note, he didn't specify the year.