Hedge funds and other large institutional traders always get private information. Always.
The NY Times have a piece up reminiscent of information flows before, well, before every other major market event. Ever.
(Oh dear, sorry to be such a cynic).
- senior members of the president's economic team, privately addressing board members of the conservative Hoover Institution ... Tomas J. Philipson, a senior economic adviser to the president, told the group he could not yet estimate the effects of the virus on the American economy. To some in the group, the implication was that an outbreak could prove worse than Mr. Philipson and other Trump administration advisers were signaling in public at the time.
- The next day, board members - many of them Republican donors - got another taste of government uncertainty from Larry Kudlow, the director of the National Economic Council. Hours after he had boasted on CNBC that the virus was contained in the United States and "it's pretty close to airtight," Mr. Kudlow delivered a more ambiguous private message. He asserted that the virus was "contained in the U.S., to date, but now we just don't know," according to a document describing the sessions obtained by The New York Times.
- The document, written by a hedge fund consultant who attended the three-day gathering of Hoover's board, was stark. "What struck me," the consultant wrote, was that nearly every official he heard from raised the virus "as a point of concern, totally unprovoked."
Here is the link to the NYT piece.
Hmmm. When this happening China was descending into months of lockdown. Reading the tea leaves was not that difficult.
