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Comment by grey-area | Hacker News Reader

NB this is for the first quarter of 2020, which had hardly any impact from Covid-19 - lockdowns mostly happened late March and the start of April.

So the second quarter will be a better reflection of the impact of shutdowns and changes in consumer behaviour/travel, but we won't see figures for that for a while.

Almost more worrying, 20% of the value of the S&P 500 is now concentrated in the top 5 tech stocks, which are vulnerable in these conditions (advertising spend is dropping dramatically and unemployment is rising).

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/13/five-biggest-stocks-dwarfing...

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While you’re right that Q2 will be worse than Q1, don’t underestimate how early the pain started. Restaurant bookings on OpenTable began dropping in early March, before the lockdowns began. By 3/16 OpenTable has bookings down 50%, before most municipalities had lockdown orders in place.

And that’s not even including the drop in travel and supply chain difficulties, which started earlier still.

Large scale government lockdowns may have started in late March. By the beginning of March, corporations, local governments, and people were starting their own lockdowns. I had a 3 day business trip in early March. I wasn't sure if it was going to be cancelled because of the virus. Both flights weren't even half full. Security lines were either almost or entirely non-existent. In Philly, traffic was significantly less and far fewer people in restaurants than previous visits. Before I got home, local schools were already starting close. From my point of view, everything started at the end of February or very beginning of March.

Vulnerable, yes but the google earnings from yesterday show even in advertising, there seems to be a temporary floor.

Entirely possible the floor is a temporary illusion and falls out over next 3mo, but the market is betting that won’t happen (I don’t know why, I’m not an expert on ads)

Yes, it could conceivably go either way at present, and I guess the market is being optimistic, but most countries are locking down for months, not weeks, and there may unfortunately be a second wave for some.

Do bear in mind those google results were for a quarter which was pretty much untouched outside China.

The market can either be betting that there’s a floor, or that Google will survive and ads will be valuable again in the future. Either or.

> NB this is for the first quarter of 2020, which had hardly any impact from Covid-19

Except the economy was impacted, since manufacturing in China was slowed during the first quarter.

I don't think US companies felt much pain, certainly it was nothing compared to being forced to shut for months, or having most of their customers forced to shut/stay at home.

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