Which brings an interesting question: how many of all the people you know who knew, yourself included, put their skin in the game and are now rich from the options they bought in January? If it is not many, I would argue it is better to say people suspected or feared, not that they knew.
I did, however, rebalance almost entirely out of stocks three weeks ago and while I am not "now rich", my portfolio is doing a hell of a lot better than most folks'.
I didn't even know that a "put" on the stock market was a thing until last week, and am not particularly interested in figuring out how to do that... But I did back out of buying a car because I thought I'd be better off to have the cash when this gets bad, and here we are now in this thread... Maybe next time (hopefully there isn't one) I'll figure out more of what a "put" actually is and how to get one
That being said, I did take what I felt was a risk at the time and shorted Royal Caribbean and Carnival Cruise lines which payed off, but I was not certain that at the time it would (if I was I would have risked a whole lot more), I went off a hunch once I started seeing them close the ports to cruise ships. I am now buying those stocks because I think their hit from CORVID-19 is priced in, but we will see. It's all a guessing game on good hunches. Hardly anybody saw it exploding (short of the doctors on the ground in Wuhan) and everyone was hoping that it was going to be contained in China just like SARS was.
The reality is, Doctors and the CDC do not make decisions on news reports they make them on papers and data from people on the ground. That data was actively being suppressed to some extent by China until it was too late. Sure there where rouge Chinese doctors in the media warning us (and they where right), but that is a thin straw to base policy on. Once the true data was out and the CDC could base guideline on it, it was already too late.
Also to note I am sorry and pray for those of you that are affected by this.
But even if you saw it coming, how does this help now? Right, it doesn't.
That someone's circles saw it coming doesn't help. Wht you can do now helps. Unfortunately a lot of these folks are lacking in that department IMHO.
But every time there were people "predicting" the worst. This time they were coindentially correct. Not because they "knew", but because chance.
Ref: https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/31/21117403/trump-coronaviru...
My comment was in response to people not realizing this was a thing a month ago.
And then the House tried to remove Trump's travel ban: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/12/house-committee-vot...
You can play politics or you can look at reality.
page 9 Do you think the coronavirus epidemic is a national emergency? yes, democrats 81%; no, republicans 53%
page 18 Which cable news network do you watch the most? Democrats, 42% CNN, 48% MSNBC; Republicans, 89% Fox News
Trump himself has been downplaying it this whole time. https://www.factcheck.org/2020/03/trumps-statements-about-th...
"The legislation would void all of Trump's executive actions establishing travel restrictions."
Your circles seem to be the exception then. There are a lot of factors that affect personal perception of such matters, like proximity to inflicted areas, professional background (ex: medical), experiencing similar events in the past, etc.
In hindsight it seems obvious that the world wasn't paying attention. But it took until February for western countries to realize the epidemic was already out of control, and the markets reacted.
> prevention measures would either drastically slow the economy or not be taken and the impact would be worse
Anyone that knew this last month without a doubt could've made tons of money shorting positions in the stock market.