Your level-headed briefing on how the coronavirus pandemic is affecting the markets, global business, our workplaces and daily lives, with expert input from our reporters and specialists across the globe.
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Latest news
AstraZeneca misses target for delivery of UK Covid vaccine
Denmark to cull up to 17m mink blamed for coronavirus mutation
John Lewis unveils further 1,500 job cuts
Tight race highlights broader weaknesses of Democratic campaign
The outcome of the US presidential election is on a knife edge after Donald Trump defied polls in an indication that many voters had not cast their ballots focused on his handling of coronavirus.
With counting under way in key battleground states, a CNN exit poll showed the economy — the one issue where Mr Trump consistently rated better than Democratic rival Joe Biden — was the most important issue for voters, followed by racial inequality and coronavirus.
The president’s approval ratings had appeared to dip in early October after he was hospitalised with Covid-19, and polls showed most Americans disapproved of his handling of his own infection.
But the tight race highlighted broader weaknesses of the Democratic campaign despite the heavy death toll from the pandemic attributed by critics to its management by the White House.
The US election capped almost four years of tumult for the world’s largest economy as Mr Trump secured a $1.7tn tax cut, launched trade wars around the world, and then grappled with the fallout from a pandemic that threw millions of Americans out of work.
The five states that did the best for employment as of September 2020 were generally sympathetic to Mr Trump politically, having backed him by an average margin of 12.6 percentage points in 2016, and were mostly out west.
Markets
The length and depth of value investing’s woes obscure the fact that it is far from the only casualty of the current market environment, argues the FT’s global finance correspondent Robin Wigglesworth. “It would be a brave person who declares that the sun has set on quantitative investing. One could argue that the entire money management industry is — to varying degrees — nowadays driven by quantitative research in some form or fashion.”
Illegal gold miners are flocking to the Amazon with a new, get-rich-quick culture, bringing new heavy machinery and financial knowhow. As the price of the precious metal has soared during the coronavirus crisis, so has production in the Amazon — and deforestation in its wake. Much of the gold is exported, mostly to western nations, including the UK, US and Canada.
Fading expectations of a decisive US presidential election win for Joe Biden have boosted government bonds and the shares of big US tech stocks, as investors cut back on trades based on the assumption of a “blue wave” Democratic sweep of the White House and Congress. The S&P 500 advanced 2.9 per cent in early trading in New York, led by technology stocks rather than the economy-sensitive shares that had been favoured to climb in a blue wave scenario.
Business
After transforming the fortunes of hand sanitiser and soap producers, the pandemic looks set to do the same for another previously unheralded industry — the manufacturers of outdoor heaters. A wave of new restrictions on indoor gatherings in western countries heading into winter has set off a scramble for heaters that will allow people to socialise safely — and warmly.
Independent businesses are weathering the Covid-19 pandemic better than many of the large chains that dominate Britain’s high streets, as they take advantage of falling rents and make greater use of online platforms. New research from the Local Data Company shows that while the pandemic contributed to a net 1,833 independent shops, cafés and other high-street businesses closing in the first eight months of the year, 6,001 outlets of chain stores — defined as having at least five premises — shut.
Ikea has shrugged off the impact of a second round of coronavirus lockdowns in Europe as “incomparably” less than the first, saying that this time it will be able to keep on producing its flat-pack furniture. The uneven lifting of the first lockdown was more disruptive, because it strained logistics in its supply chain and forced it to give substantial financial help to some of its hundreds of external suppliers.
Global economy
Services companies in Italy and Spain suffered a fresh fall in activity last month as restrictions to contain the second wave of Covid-19 hurt businesses, according to a widely watched business survey. Airlines, hotels, retailers and hairdressers rely on human contact, and so have been hit hardest by the curbs on people’s social interaction and movement introduced to contain the virus’s spread.
China’s business owners have spent a record amount of time collecting money owed to them this year as clients, led by large companies and local governments, put off payments in the wake of an economic slowdown. Official data show it took an average of 54 days for Chinese private manufacturers to get paid in the first three quarters of this year. That is up from 45 days in 2019 and 27 days five years ago.
English consumers are flocking to shops, restaurants and pubs while retailers have extended opening hours as they seek to bag last-minute sales ahead of the country’s four-week lockdown. Footfall at shopping centres and high streets was on Tuesday up 19 per cent compared with the same day last week, according to retail data provider Springboard.
Get in touch
How is your workplace dealing with the pandemic? How are you dealing with it as a professional or a manager? And what do you think business and markets — and our daily lives — will look like after we eventually emerge? Also — tell us what you think about this newsletter and how we can make it more useful to you. Email us at covid@ft.com. We may publish your contribution in an upcoming newsletter. Thanks.
In response to NHS returns to highest emergency level as Covid cases surge, FT reader “committed sceptic” writes:
Will they also report that hospital utilisation is no higher than usual for this time of year, that case numbers are already rising more slowly than the best case scenario in their models, that no hospitals are currently at risk of imminent collapse from Covid patients, how many of the daily test positives contracted Covid in hospital (rather than the community) and how many of those counted as deaths actually died from Covid rather than merely tested positive within 28 days of death?
Science
A little data can be a dangerous thing: our monthly FT Health newsletter highlights how digital technology has helped accelerate the response to coronavirus but skewed attention and policymaking to statistics that are the easiest to measure. The Future of AI and Digital Healthcare report explores the potential and pitfalls in improving outcomes. Click here to get FT Health in your inbox on the first Wednesday of each month.
Cases, hospitalisations and deaths in the UK are still rising, but evidence is emerging that the growth rate of the virus is already slowing. The second wave has been more serious than the government’s “reasonable worst-case scenario” but epidemiologists do not agree on the likely number of cases and deaths. In a feature well known to economists, who also deal with uncertain data and human behaviour, forecasts vary a lot.
Coronavirus induces strong and long-lasting cellular immunity after infection, new research shows, suggesting people are unlikely to quickly catch the disease again and increasing the chances vaccines will be effective. Antibodies — relatively small protein molecules — are much easier to detect and analyse in blood samples than the far larger and more complex T-cells, so have been studied more extensively by researchers.
The essentials
Budget cuts, the restrictions imposed by Covid-19 and poor data have limited the power of the Health & Safety Executive, the UK’s workplace regulator, just when it is most needed, argues the FT’s employment columnist Sarah O’Connor. “As England enters its second lockdown, key workers are on the front line again to keep the rest of us fed and cared for. We must do better to protect them while they do it.”
Final thought
Financial bubbles provide exciting material for historians, not least because they are so often accompanied by financial skulduggery, along with economically debilitating banking crises. Two new books explore how
the most damaging ones occur when the inflated asset class is deeply integrated with the rest of the economy and the banking system. Policy-induced bubbles tend to be more economically and socially damaging than technology-based ones, which often foster innovation in a variety of ways.
Source: Economy - ft.com
