Stocktake: Will China’s coronavirus infect stocks?

Will China's coronavirus infect stocks? Maybe. Cumberland Advisors' David Kotok last week cautioned that epidemics and pandemics "do have market consequences and raise risk", Goldman Sachs debated the "potential impact" on the oil market, and Bloomberg's John Authers noted how spikes in concern regarding the Ebola outbreak in 2014 overlapped with sizeable market pullbacks. Much depends on the trajectory of the deadly virus, which last week resulted in a number of Chinese cities being locked down, although most strategists agree any market effect is likely to be modest and temporary.

Examining market performance during past pandemics like Ebola and Sars is a tricky affair; countless factors drive stocks, so it’s difficult to isolate the impact – if any – of pandemics. Still, Charles Schwab data suggests any effect is fleeting, with global stocks gaining an average of 0.4 per cent in the month after an epidemic and 8.5 per cent a year later.

The virus has been blamed for recent market selling but stocks were overbought and ripe for profit-taking. For now, a serious stock market infection looks unlikely.