If I were a stock market analyst, I could look at today’s chart, make up a name (the reverse clamshell formation), declare that it clearly meant that stock prices were going up (or down, doesn’t matter), and make a ton of money as a financial pundit.
But the fact of the matter is that we’re just kind of stuck in COVID-19 limbo. The U.S. daily new case rate has been at or about the current level since late May. Going up? Going down? Going nowhere? Beats me.
Data source for this and other graphs of new case counts: Calculated from The New York Times. (2021). Coronavirus (Covid-19) Data in the United States. Retrieved 7/2/2022, from https://github.com/nytimes/covid-19-data.” The NY Times U.S. tracking page may be found at https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html
How are comparable countries getting along? Here are the countries I’ve tracked from time to time, courtesy of Our World in Data.
Oh, yeah, that’s crystal clear. Pick a pattern, any pattern. Rising rates in Europe, stable high rates in AU/NZ, stable low rates in CA/JP. Plummeting rates in Taiwan. And we’re kind of stuck in the middle, here in the U.S.A.
If I were a stock analyst, I would sagely declare that this shows sector rotation with numerous head-and-shoulders patterns evident, a clear indication that we’re going nowhere.
But as it stands, all I can say is that I have no clue what happens next.
