Black Swan Event For Financial Markets Has Just Happened 金融市场的黑天鹅事件刚刚发生

"About 5 million residents left Wuhan before the lockdown because of the deadly coronavirus epidemic and the Spring Festival holiday, mayor Zhou Xianwang revealed on Sunday, as health officials ­warned the virus’ ­ability to spread was ­getting ­stronger. There were about 9 million people remaining in the city after the lockdown, Zhou told a press conference. Of the 2,700 people currently under observation in the city, about 1,000 were likely to be confirmed cases. As of Sunday, Wuhan had 533 new confirmed cases." ---South China Morning Post

The latest case distribution worldwide are shown in the following graphs:

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a finance professor and former Wall Street trader, wrote about the Black Swan concept in his 2001 book Fooled by Randomness which concerned financial events.  In his later book, The Black Swan, he defines three attributes that are common to all black swan events:

The event is unpredictable (to the observer)
The event has widespread ramifications
After the event has occurred, people will assert that it was indeed explainable and predictable (hindsight bias).

The Wuhan Coronavirus sure satisfies the first two criteria listed above since the event was not predicted and the spread of virus is still not contained. The Wuhan Coronavirus is similar to the
2003 SARS out break. The S&P 500 was down 17.3% over a 2 month period when SARS hit.

So it is reasonable to project the Wuhan Coronavirus out break will cause the S&P500 to have a similar sharp correction especially after an one year rise of 25%. A correction down to 200 day moving average at around 3000 level is about 10% down from the 3338 top. If it comes down for a 38% retracement to 2956, it would be a 11.4% drop from the top. For a 50% retracement down to 2839, it would be a 15% drop from the top.

S&P 500 Futures was trading down 33 points （-1%） at 3:33 PM Pacific Time on Sunday.




“武汉市长周贤旺周日透露，由于致命的冠状病毒流行在春节假期期间，约有五百万居民在封锁前离开了武汉。卫生官员警告说，这种病毒的传播能力已越来越强。 封锁武汉之后，大约有900万人留在这座城市。 在该市目前正在观察的2700人中，约有1000例很可能会是确诊病例。 周日，武汉已有533新增确诊病例。” ---《南华早报》

下图显示了全球最新的病例分布：

金融学教授，前华尔街交易员纳西姆·尼古拉斯·塔勒布（Nassim Nicholas Taleb）在其2001年的书《愚昧无知》中谈到涉及金融事件黑天鹅的概念。 在他后期的书《黑天鹅》中，他定义了所有黑天鹅事件共有的三个属性：

事件是不可预测的
该事件产生了广泛的影响
事件发生后，人们会断言该事件确实是可以解释和可预测的（事后偏差）。

武汉冠状病毒肯定可以满足上面列出的前两个标准，因为该事件没有被预测到并且病毒的传播仍然没有得到控制。 武汉冠状病毒类似于2003年SARS的爆发。 在SARS爆发后的两个月内，标普500指数下跌了17.3％。

因此，可以合理预期武汉冠状病毒的爆发将使标普500指数出现类似的大幅回调，尤其是在一年上涨25％之后。 如果向下修正至200天移动平均线3000点附近大约是从顶部3338水平要跌10％。 如果跌至2956的38％的回撤线水平，那将是从顶部下跌约11.4％。 至于回落至2839的50％回调线，它将从顶部下跌15％。

周日太平洋时间下午3:33，标普500期货下跌33点（-1％）。