fortune--2020-03-21--Diary of a lockdown: What it feels like in 16 cities during the pandemic

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The world has reported more than 265,000 cases of the coronavirus, and governments and companies are urging—and sometimes mandating—that people work from home, avoid gathering spaces like restaurants and bars, and stick to essential activities only.
This has radically changed everyday life for people globally. Fortune staffers around the world share snapshots of what social distancing and lockdowns feel like in 16 cities.
March 14, 2020
Chicago
Patrons drink at Nick’s Beer Garden in Chicago to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day despite the efforts to combat the spread of COVID-19. Joshua Lott—Reuters
St. Patrick’s Day is always a major holiday in Chicago (we usually dye the river green!). This year, many of the usual parties and events were canceled, but a lot of people still seemed to end up going to bars. My Instagram feed was basically people at bars celebrating or people posting about how you should absolutely not be at bars right now. Two separate worlds/realities. —John Buysse, audience engagement editor
March 15, 2020
Madrid
Lockdown day five in Spain. Paseo de la Castellana, Madrid, on March 19, 2020, at 1:30 p.m. The Castellana is Madrid’s main north/south artery. Courtesy of Ian Mount
A year ago, our building’s doorman, Martín, and his family adopted a rambunctious but shy chocolate Lab puppy they named Draco. Today, on the first day of the lockdown, Draco, like every dog in Madrid, became a star when dog walking was listed as one of the few ways to be on the street without receiving a fine. Dog memes flood WhatsApp—exhausted puppies with thought balloons saying, “But I’ve been out 38 times today!” and “The whole building has taken me for a walk. Who the hell is this Covid?”
In my coworking space’s group, we brainstorm businesses: How about combining a bicycle food-delivery service with a dog-rental offering? Twenty euros for two hours with a Yorkie. It’s funny, but I know we’re laughing to avoid facing an invisible assassin that’s already taking casualties: eight deaths at the Hospital Princesa five blocks away, where in simpler days I visited my dermatologist; the normalcy I’d taken for granted—the right to walk down the street, window-shop, share a caña with friends; and the basic ideas of freedom, of contact, of community. When I see Martín later, he tells me that he used to do all the dog walking, but since the lockdown his two daughters were trying to ease him out of the job: “Now the girls fight over who gets to take him.” Today was, at least in theory, my birthday. Next year, I think I’d like a dog. —Ian Mount, contributing editor
March 16, 2020
Paris
Paris lockdown: a lone shopper with disposable gloves and homemade mask. Courtesy of Vivienne Walt
We had a typical drinks party in Paris on Monday night with good Bordeaux and interesting people. Only one twist: The nine guests were scattered in different streets around the city, logging into the digital drinks party with a glass in hand, right after Emmanuel Macron had finished telling France in his presidential address, “We are at war.” In fact, we felt we had something to celebrate—a 15-day lockdown. That was a whole lot better than the rumors that had swirled all day of a 45-day lockdown with a 6 p.m. curfew. Two weeks suddenly felt minor. Digital drinks parties are a fast-growing phenomenon in the time of the coronavirus, so here are a few tips: Dress up, from the waist up—it’s a party! And iron out the tech kinks, which for us involved muting mics that weren’t being used. “This is the first epidemic with social media,” one of us said. “I can even record it.” Amid the dismal news—and the claustrophobia—there’s a sense of witnessing history too. —Vivienne Walt, Europe correspondent
March 17, 2020
Los Angeles
Ocean Avenue (at Arizona Ave, looking northbound), one of downtown Santa Monica’s main thoroughfares. Lined with hotels, restaurants, and the Santa Monica Pier—and featuring an unbroken vista that looks out over the Pacific Ocean—it’s usually a favorite destination for tourists. Today, with the pier and retailers closed over COVID-19 concerns, it’s nearly silent. Courtesy of Andrew Nusca
Tuesday; evening rush hour in L.A. Having finished my work for the day, I shift the car into “drive” and slowly wind my way to the main road. At this time of day, it’s certain chaos: cars stacked up trying to get on the freeway, vehicles strewn across intersections in a desperate attempt to beat the light, an endless repeating pattern of scarlet brake lights. But there’s none of that. The asphalt is empty. The intersections are clear. The freeways are…free. Is this what Los Angeles is actually supposed to be like?
I drive—with alarming ease—to Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade in search of a hot meal. The typically busy thoroughfare has been hushed. The buskers have been banished; the perambulators have perished. A lone bicyclist winds aimlessly around colorful outdoor furniture installed by the local business improvement district. As the sun sinks into the Pacific Ocean three blocks away, a customer asks the man making his burrito if it’s been consistently this quiet. He looks up and counts the four people inside the restaurant, all waiting to take their food back to their homes by law. “Yeah,” he says, as the clock near him advances to 6:45 p.m. “This is the biggest rush we’ve had all day.” —Andrew Nusca, digital editor
Boston/Cambridge
A completely empty bulletin board that was once covered in activities for Harvard University students in Cambridge. Courtesy of Aaron Pressman
Taking my son to a weekly appointment in Boston’s Back Bay neighborhood every Tuesday afternoon is typically a stressful affair, dodging traffic and searching for an elusive parking space. This week, with Bostonians urged to stay home, most stores were closed, pedestrians were few and far between, and parking was ample. As I walked around the Newbury Street shopping district, almost everything was closed, from the tony art galleries and restaurants to major retailers like Nike and Apple. The nearby Back Bay train station was also a ghost town, with more than half of Amtrak’s schedule canceled. A lone masked worker walked out of the MBTA’s Orange Line subway.
Later I drove by Harvard University, which dismissed all students and asked them to move out of their dorms by March 15. The vast Widener Library was locked up tight. A popular bulletin board usually crammed with fliers and announcements for upcoming events was completely blank. Harvard Square’s bookshops and eateries were mostly closed, too, and no one was playing chess at the outdoor boards nearby. Famous Harvard Yard was empty except for a few tourists from China wearing face masks and a couple of hungry squirrels. —Aaron Pressman, senior writer
March 18, 2020
London
The baking section inside a Waitrose supermarket near Jeremy Kahn’s house in north London. There is a shortage of flour and eggs throughout the country as demand has soared. Courtesy of Jeremy Kahn
I’m in a hurry to drop my kids off. Schools have remained open in the U.K., which has been slower to impose stringent social distancing measures than elsewhere. (Later, the Prime Minister announces all schools will shut from Monday.) After depositing them at the school gate, I need to buy bread. I’d visited two stores yesterday, but they were sold out. In fact, there wasn’t much of anything available. Whole aisles had been stripped bare by panicked stockpiling. Normally we shop online, but the grocers’ websites have been inundated, and no delivery slots are available, even searching weeks ahead. Some have stopped taking online orders entirely. I felt queasy looking around the empty shelves. That’s why today, I want to get to the store quickly.
It’s crowded, and the shelves are less empty than before. Some things—eggs, flour, pasta, rice, and toilet paper—are still unavailable. The store has brought in additional staff to restock. Many seem lost. An employee is apologizing to a customer for being unable to help her find an item. She doesn’t normally work here, she explains. She’s one of the executives from the supermarket’s head office, but they’ve all been pressed into service to keep the shelves full. The customer shakes her head and says how crazy it all is. I nod in agreement. — Jeremy Kahn, senior writer
New York
A peaceful view of New York City at 6:30 a.m. while on a run. Courtesy of Phil Wahba
Life in New York City would be unbearable for me were it not for the proximity of Central Park, the city’s so-called Green Lung. The 843-acre park offers not only trees, flowers, and fresh air, but sanctuary too, especially during major crises. Wanting to reconcile the need to go run with the imperative for social distancing, I head from my Upper West Side apartment to the park at 6:00 a.m., when crowds are still thin, entering at West 90th street.
After the first two-mile interval of my speed workout (my coach can see remotely if I am slacking off!) in pitch darkness, I take a break on the western edge of the reservoir to watch the sky get orange and pink as the sun rises up from behind Upper East Side apartment buildings. To the south, the dawn’s early light gives the Midtown Manhattan skyline a purple hue and makes America’s biggest, messiest, noisiest city look peaceful. All the while, my fellow runners on the reservoir and the park’s six-mile inner loop seeking the same solace and outlet start to increase in numbers as day breaks. After the next two-mile interval, I jogged out of the park, down Seventh Avenue, to Times Square. I see the normally crowded, bustling, and noisy “Crossroads of the World” has become a serene plaza in the time of the coronavirus outbreak, a few cars and pedestrians here and there but no honking. Concluding my workout, I do my final interval along the Hudson River to get home, enjoying a semblance of normalcy, if only a brief one, before resuming my seclusion from the city. —Phil Wahba, senior writer
Portland, Ore.
Cartopia food cart pod on Hawthorne Street in Portland, Ore., on March 18, around 7:30 p.m. One of the pioneering lots that make up Portland’s food cart scene, the outdoor dining hub is where many locals go for items from wood-fired pizza to poutine. This particular pod is popular with younger customers because of its late-night hours. Courtesy of John Patrick Pullen
It’s the year’s first sunny day above 60 degrees, which in most places would feel like a holiday. In Portland it’s usually an outdoor orgy of runners and bicyclists clogging the roads and a sea of people sunbathing in parks. Today, though, it’s sparse. It’s what I imagine Portland was like 30 years ago, before it became popular and cool, a time old hipsters regard as the city’s golden years.
That era sprouted the city’s unparalleled food cart scene. I drive over to Cartopia, perhaps the city’s oldest cart pod, and find nearly all eight of the mini-restaurants staffed, despite the desolation. But there’s only around six customers, and they’re all waiting for takeout, while keeping each other at a respectful distance.
“Hey! The coronavirus didn’t kill you!” jokes the lone staffer at Chicken and Guns, as a friend approaches. “It just killed the business,” he adds under his breath.
These eight carts typically staff around 80 people, they tell me. Yesterday, Chicken and Guns’ manager laid himself off, because he needed to stay home with his kid. A couple more weeks of days like this, they say, and their food carts will close—perhaps for good.
That’s already the scene at Powell’s, the legendary indie book shop that temporarily closed its doors this week. “When we do open our stores again,” wrote president Emily Powell, “we expect the landscape of Oregon…will have changed dramatically.”
Portland’s already has. Coronavirus has barely taken hold here, but it’s killed the Portlandia joke that this is where young people go to retire. Retiring sounds fun, sure…until you realize what comes next. —John Patrick Pullen, tech editor
Washington, D.C.
Many monuments and museums in Washington, D.C., like the Washington Monument, seen here, are closed. Courtesy of Karen Yuan
It’s cherry blossom season in D.C., and the air is warm and inviting and streaming with petals. This time last year, the tree-lined National Mall was teeming with people taking photos. Now the branches are pink and full while the streets are empty, like tables set for a feast no one’s going to. I’m walking past a closed Washington Monument, then a closed National Museum of African American History and Culture, then a closed Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, then a closed National Art Gallery, and it feels like the entire capital has shut down. The only thing that has stayed open is a paraphernalia stall advertising USA-emblazoned T-shirts, eagle-shaped magnets, and MAGA hats, its vendor sitting out front, staring bleakly at the deserted plaza in front of her. —Karen Yuan, newsletters editor
Glen Ridge, N.J.
A quiet residential street in Glen Ridge, N.J. Courtesy of Emma Hinchliffe
Twelve miles west of Manhattan, the streets of Glen Ridge are empty. It’s not quite as eerie as a desolate Times Square, but it feels more like a slow summer day than the middle of March: no kids walking to school and barely any New York commuters heading for the usually bustling NJ Transit train station. I usually live in Chinatown, in New York City, but came home to my mom’s house to ride out the social isolation order. She’s a real estate agent, and her work—open houses, showing houses to clients—has slowed to a crawl. One bit of good news: The neighbors are planning a socially distanced curbside happy hour. —Emma Hinchliffe, associate editor
March 19, 2020
Berlin
Viktoria-Luise-Platz in Berlin on Tuesday, showing how people aren’t taking social distancing very seriously yet. Courtesy of David Meyer
Our local Edeka grocery store has finally begun restricting the number of people who can shop there at one time. Until now, the queues were packed as tight as “usual”—a word that no longer feels very defined. The store had fresh milk today; we don’t need to tuck into our reserves of long-life milk just yet. I bumped into our elderly neighbor on the way there. We have repeatedly told him and his wife that they need to stay indoors, and we can get them anything they need, but they keep going out. I don’t blame them—we all need to stay sane—but I do worry about them.
Our day care facility, Berlin’s Kitas, closed on Tuesday, so my wife and I are both working full-time at home with a toddler who, being sick, is giving us very broken nights. A mere two-and-a-half days in, it feels incredibly difficult—all we do is work, care for her, and sleep when we can. Rinse and repeat. Being prone to journalistic shorthand, I have felt the temptation to call this situation hellish. But I know there is real hell in this crisis, and we have fortunately managed not to encounter it yet. —David Meyer, senior writer
Vail, Colo.
No lift-ticket sales in Vail, Colo. Courtesy of Jeff John Roberts
Three inches of fresh snow have just fallen in Vail when I arrive on a Thursday morning in mid-March. The new snow means a layer of “champagne powder” is dusting the slopes of this Colorado resort town—offering up the perfect winter experience that draws skiers and snowboarders to Vail from around the globe.
But even as more snow comes down, there is only eerie silence. No one is on the slopes, and the adjoining village is deserted. Vail’s Gondola One, which ordinarily whisks 10 skiers up the mountain in an enclosed bubble with heated seats and Wi-Fi, sits forlorn. Nearby chairlifts are as still as they are in midsummer.
Less than a week before, the place was teeming with the first wave of spring break arrivals and ticket booths were busy, even with one-day lift passes priced at $219. The village bustled with swanky restaurants and après-ski options, alongside pricey jewelry stores and galleries. Then came the order from Colorado’s governor, responding to reports of COVID-19 outbreaks in the state’s famous ski towns, to shut it down. Shut it all down. Now, Vail is utterly empty, as are famous nearby destinations like Breckenridge and Aspen. Meanwhile, the snow piles up. —Jeff John Roberts, senior writer
Rome
An undertaker wearing a face mask and coveralls unloads a coffin out of a hearse on March 16, 2020, at the Monumental cemetery of Bergamo, Italy. Piero Cruciatti—AFP via Getty Images
Week one inside the first nationwide lockdown by a democracy since World War II: monotony. Week two: dead bodies.
We can’t believe the nightly TV reports coming in from Bergamo, a prosperous northern city less than an hour from Milan. The city, famous for banking, steel, and San Pellegrino mineral water, was late to enforce lockdown measures. Now the infection rate has since spiraled, and the overflow of sick people are being treated in triage tents in hospital parking lots. The dead are so numerous the city has called in the army to remove them.
My sister-in-law works in the mayor’s office for a large city in central Italy, hundreds of miles from Bergamo. She’s been pressed into duty to help manage the city’s COVID-19 response. It’s long hours on the phone looking for Protezione Civile volunteers—the brave men and women restoring order in a community after an earthquake or landslide—to bring food and medical supplies to the homes of the city’s swelling numbers of stranded elderly. In week two of the lockdown, this city where she works began fielding a different kind of call: Can you help us with the dead?
The morgues and crematories in Bergamo and in Ancona, another coronavirus hotspot on the Adriatic coast, are overwhelmed. They’ve begun shipping the dead to other regions to handle the autopsies and cremations. “The bodies arrive here alone,” she told me. “No family.”
An expert in modern art, my sister-in-law used to organize cultural events for the city. Italy’s economy has been hurting for years, but Italian communities always seem to find just enough money to put on a concert or an art exhibit or a sagra festival of food and wine that never fails to impress. That was her job, her passion. All public gatherings have been called off since the lockdown went into effect. “This is completely extraordinary,” she started to tell me. The phone rang. It was the mayor. Something urgent. She had to get back to work. —Bernhard Warner, senior writer and editor
Oakland
Oakland’s Fox Theater lies dormant without lights on. Courtesy of Jonathan Vanian
The normally busy streets of downtown Oakland are now bare. There’s hardly any life moving around in this typically bustling part of the East Bay, and it’s eerie. Although not the economic powerhouse of San Francisco’s financial center, Oakland’s downtown has spruced up in recent years, becoming the little commercial district that could. But you wouldn’t be able to tell now.
People aren’t spilling out from the BART station during prime commute time. Workers aren’t grabbing lunches from nearby delis or taco shops. Hipsters aren’t congregating at popular cafés. It’s as if everyone is hunkering down inside, trying to avoid the plague—it fact, that’s exactly what it is.
The iconic Fox Theater is closed with a short, optimistic note: “Back Soon!” Oakland’s Chinatown is relatively sparse—the few people out are store clerks in face masks, hoping to make a sale. Even nearby Lake Merritt is barren, with just a few lonely joggers on a grim day.
There’s a strange sense of serenity that comes from walking through a nearly abandoned downtown. It’s oddly calming being alone with one’s thoughts in the middle of a city—usually hikes in the forest provide that occasionally nice refuge from other people. But man, do I miss seeing everyone. —Jonathan Vanian, writer
St. Louis
St. Louis’s City Museum, whose exhibits consist largely of repurposed architectural and industrial objects, is closed through March 31. Courtesy of Ellen McGirt
I live in the kind of St. Louis suburb where social distancing—big lawns, empty sidewalks—is part of the draw. And yet, even here, the stress is starting to build. While the Nextdoor app is filled with offers to help neighbors in need, my favorite local grocery chain, Dierbergs, has begun limiting the amounts you can buy of certain food. You can finally get all the romaine you want, but you’ll have to slow down on the bread and eggs. (Also, there seems to be a run on chicken and shrimp, and the butcher has been redeployed.)
The biggest casualty so far are reusable grocery bags. They are banned from today on for the foreseeable future. “It’s for everyone’s safety,” said the glove-wearing checkout clerk. “We’re totally hopeful here but want to be safe.”
It’s spring break for the majority of St. Louis schools this week, so empty school parking lots are the norm. While it still feels normal to not be shuttling my 15-year-old to and from school, both the St. Louis Zoo and the world-famous City Museum are closed because of the coronavirus. (Along with all the other amazing museums.) But these two are a tough loss for us and typically the highlight for visitors and spring break staycationers—particularly during an unusually warm week. Around the corner from the City Museum, an adult day care is also closed. I’ve visited there during the holidays in the past, and it’s hard to imagine how they’re all doing.
With spring break travel canceled, my husband has fulfilled his lifelong dream of getting our son hooked on Dungeons and Dragons. —Ellen McGirt, senior editor
San Francisco
An almost empty Chinatown in San Francisco. Courtesy of Danielle Abril
On the city’s third day following the shelter-in-place order, some of the most bustling areas in San Francisco—the Fisherman’s Wharf, Chinatown, the Financial District—are eerily quiet. Buses, usually packed to the doors, are carrying a handful of passengers at most. The subway stations, normally loud, crowded spaces where street performers busk, are almost deserted, with most noise coming from the trains themselves. And the iconic cable cars that cart residents and visitors up and down some of the city’s steepest hills are nowhere to be found, replaced by shuttles for the time being. Pad locks on gated shops line shop-heavy streets.
Everything is closed minus non-essential businesses like grocery stores, pharmacies, banks, and, in San Francisco, cannabis dispensaries that are getting a decent amount of foot traffic. Lines still snake outside several grocery stores, which are limiting the purchase of several products including bread, toilet paper, and paper towels. Locals, many donning masks, are venturing outdoors to walk their dogs, pick up take-out food, and get fresh air, but for the most part are practicing staying six feet apart. Running trails and parks appear to be the liveliest parts of the cities, with people flocking there to enjoy some sun. And while city and state officials are working to temporarily house the homeless, people without a place to go are still sleeping under bus stop canopies and gathering in various pockets of the city. —Danielle Abril, tech writer
March 20, 2020
Long Island
The line of customers waiting to get in to Costco wraps around the warehouse. Courtesy of Devin Hance
My local Costco is absolute chaos. The line to get in wraps around the entire warehouse. Panic buying has been a very real thing here. Toilet paper at Costco has been limited to the first 100 people, so the community has banded together to share resources. My dad got a pack from a neighbor.
The children in my cul de sac have made it a routine to congregate after lunch for a game of soccer or to share someone’s trampoline or yard games.
The city is mostly shut down, but living with JFK airport in my backyard, I can’t help but wonder where these incoming and outgoing flights are going. —Devin Hance, video producer
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Subscribe to Outbreak, a daily newsletter roundup of stories on the coronavirus pandemic and its impact on global business. It’s free to get it in your inbox.


fortune--2020-03-21--Life without sports—betting firms begin to tally up their coronavirus losses

The Coronavirus Economy : How my job managing one of the top cooking schools in Paris has changed

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Given the relentless spread of death and economic gloom with the coronavirus pandemic, it seems a reasonably safe bet that most people’s reserve of sympathy will have been used up before they get to consider the plight of the bookmaker.
Any yet, the word ‘plight’ is no exaggeration. The $450 billion global industry is reeling from the shutdown of professional sports—from professional soccer and basketball to horse racing—as governments around the world clamp down with increasing severity on mass gatherings.
On Tuesday alone, two of the most prominent U.K.-based industry players issued profit warnings after the British Horse Racing Authority canceled all meetings until the end of April, dashing hopes that it could continue racing behind closed doors until the worst of the COVID-19 outbreak passed.
With that, bookies such as William Hill and GVC, the owner of U.K. high street betting chains Ladbrokes and Coral, lost their biggest money-spinner of the year, the Grand National, which is run every April at Liverpool’s Aintree course. And if the virus in the U.K. continues to follow its expected course (the government’s chief scientific adviser Patrick Vallance estimates the country is three weeks behind Italy), it’s hard to see either the Guineas meeting at Newmarket in May or the Epsom Derby and Royal Ascot meetings in June taking place either.
Although in long-term decline, horse-racing still accounts for a big chunk of a U.K. betting market that was worth 14.4 billion pounds ($16.8 billion) last year, according to Gambling Commission data. GVC said the suspension will take over 20 million pounds a month off cash earnings, excluding any mitigating effects.
Within hours of the Grand National news, the bookies were dealt another blow as UEFA postponed the Euro 2020 soccer championships by a year, denying them another valuable source of revenue. The Tokyo Olympics, more prestigious in sporting terms but less lucrative than either the National or the Euros, still hangs in the balance.
All English and European soccer is also now on hold until the crisis passes, leaving the stresses of home-schooling as the only thing stopping habitual gamblers from going mad with boredom. A look at the upcoming events page on William Hill on Friday afternoon offered a choice between the Belarusian soccer league, Australian club rugby and…a table tennis competition. Two days earlier, CEO Ulrich Bengtsson talked up the prospect of customers switching to its “well-established virtual sports” as an alternative. He could do worse than ask the man behind the marble racing videos to provide content.
Day 4 without sports:
Marble racing is intense!
pic.twitter.com/uBLaWPeViJ — Sports (@bringsportsback) March 16, 2020
Betting on the U.S.
This is as much a problem for William Hill as it is for any emerging market country suddenly cut off from the capital markets. It has borrowed heavily in the last couple of years to expand its digital presence and establish itself in the U.S. casino market: an entirely rational diversification away from its British network of high street locations, but one that leaves it vulnerable until that U.S. investment starts paying off.
With casinos across the U.S. starting to shut their doors due to the virus, that day is now further away than it seemed a month ago. You know your luck’s out when even your good bets go wrong.
William Hill—like many other companies right now—took pains on Tuesday to say that its balance sheet was robust, and that it had still had an undrawn 425 million-pound ($520 million) debt facility to fall back on.
But access to that facility depends on keeping net debt to less than 3.5 times basic operating earnings (before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization). At the end of last year, that ratio was 2.4.
But what happens to EBITDA in the time of COVID-19? William Hill warned that it’s likely to fall by between 100 and 110 million pounds (approximately 40% of what analysts were expecting for 2020) in what might be construed as a central-case scenario, under which the racing ban stays in place through June and the NFL season resumes on time in September.
Should the U.K. stores be closed for more than one month, it expects a further hit to EBITDA of up to 30 million pounds a month, at which point the company may end up dependent on the 330 billion-pound loan guarantee scheme outlined by U.K. Treasury chief Rishi Sunak on Tuesday. Systemically-relevant bookmakers, please form an orderly line.
“Banks may be happy to overlook (a covenant breach) in the short term, given the circumstances – but that’s not a given,” warned Hargreaves Lansdown analyst Emilie Stevens in a note to clients.
Small wonder William Hill shares fell 26% on the news on Tuesday, taking their losses for the last month to over 75% year-to-date. GVC, which shares many of William Hill’s problems, saw its shares fall 12.2%, to be down 61% on the month.
Both companies may be casting envious glances at other segments of the betting industry. Companies specializing in spread-betting—a phenomenon with its roots in sports but which has flourished in financial markets under the grander name of Contracts for Differences—have so far done far better out of COVID-19. They’ve been able to cash in handsomely on increased volatility in equity, bond and currency markets.
Plus500, an Israeli-based CfD startup that is a member of the London FTSE 250 midcap index, said on Monday that it expects revenue and profit this year to be “substantially ahead of current consensus expectations.” In addition to its normal transaction-driven fees, it said it’s done particularly well on ‘customer trading performance’ – that is, taking the other side of client bets on market movements.
That news was enough to push up the share price of IG Group, the world’s largest CfD provider, by nearly 4% on Tuesday, making it nearly more valuable than Hill’s and GVC’s together. What odds on both, or either, surviving the year of COVID-19?
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—This famed economist doesn’t think we’re headed for another Great Recession
—These estimates of how much COVID-19 will hurt the economy are terrifying
—With the markets in turmoil, the ECB readies a bond-buying bazooka
—Here’s where Goldman Sachs predicts the stock market will bottom out—Listen to Leadership Next, a Fortune podcast examining the evolving role of CEO
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fortune--2020-03-21--States cannot fight coronavirus alone. The federal government must step up

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The coronavirus is spreading at an exponential rate. Thus far, control measures have been mainly the initiative of individual states, rather than the federal government. This has been the case for social distancing policies and medical resource allocations alike.
This decentralized approach was reiterated in Thursday’s White House press conference. President Trump told reporters that states should try to acquire ventilators and tests on their own before asking the federal government’s assistance. “The federal government’s not supposed to be out there buying vast amounts of items and then shipping, you know, we’re not a shipping clerk.”
However, research shows that in the face of epidemics, there is no substitute for centralized, federal-level actions when designing effective policies. The reason is that states and cities are not isolated from one another. They are interconnected because individuals and goods travel freely among them without any screening or testing.
This creates what the scientific literature calls network effects. Because of network effects, individual states are less effective than the federal government is in controlling contagion at the national level. And the federal government can only accomplish this if foreign inflows can be controlled.
Consider the case of the common flu. It is far less contagious than the coronavirus is, but its spreading mechanism is similar. Our research shows that there are substantial network effects on the spread of the virus. The implication is that taking these effects into account is crucial in designing effective contagion control policies. In the case of the common flu, this can make such policies up to three times as effective. Only the federal government can achieve such efficiency gains; individual states cannot.
In particular, two concrete lessons can be drawn from our research on the spread of the common flu.
The first lesson concerns the specification of travel restrictions. Unlike individual states, the federal government can identify the key routes across state boundaries where travel restrictions should be prioritized at a given stage of the epidemic. Specifically, it can identify the crucial origin-destination pairs where travel restrictions would be most effective.
As an example, New York and Florida have approximately equal population sizes, but the number of identified coronavirus infections is more than 15 times larger in the former. It would therefore be more effective to shut down travel into Florida as opposed to into New York, even if the travel volumes between the two states are the same. Only the federal government can impose such restrictions.
The second lesson is about the allocation of medical resources. For example, it is far from optimal to let individual states decide on how many coronavirus testing kits or ventilators—both in extremely scarce supply—they should attempt to procure, or where in their state to place them. Free, decentralized market mechanisms fail in settings of extreme scarcity where the goal is to save as many lives as possible.
Moreover, an optimally effective allocation of these scarce supplies should not be based on simple metrics such as population sizes or the current number of infected individuals. Once again, the network effects need to be integrated in the analysis, but this cannot be done by the individual states. For instance, New Jersey today has a much lower infection rate than does Washington state. But because of the much higher travel volume from and to New Jersey, it may prove more effective in the long run to have more testing kits there.
There are substantial benefits in acting at the federal level to allocate medical resources where they will be most effective and to determine which, if any, travel routes should be curtailed or shut down. Only the federal government can determine and implement such optimal policies.
Fanyin Zheng is an assistant professor of the Decision, Risk, and Operations Division of Columbia Business School.
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—Tax deadline moved to July 15 due to coronavirus
—Death rate in China’s coronavirus epicenter is lower than previously thought
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—As oil slides on coronavirus and price war, the market looks for the new normal
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—Listen to Leadership Next, a Fortune podcast examining the evolving role of CEO
—WATCH: World leaders and health experts on how to stop the spread of COVID-19
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fortune--2020-03-21--‘Our country needed help:’ Italy’s only ventilator maker works round the clock (and at cost) in coro

‘Our country needed help:’ Italy’s only ventilator maker works round the clock (and at cost) in coronavirus fight

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Efforts to halt the coronavirus pandemic have been likened to fighting a war. For Italian businessman Gianluca Preziosa, the call to arms arrived on the morning of March 6, when his phone rang and a government official on the line from Rome informed him that the prime minister would be getting in touch in a matter of minutes.
Italian leader Giuseppe Conte was eager to speak with the 46-year-old manager given that Preziosa’s company, Siare Engineering, is the only Italian manufacturer of a key weapon in the battle against coronavirus: ventilators.
Moments later, Preziosa and his father Giuseppe, who founded Siare in 1974, were speaking via videoconference with Conte and Angelo Borrelli, head of the Civil Protection agency, Italy’s equivalent to FEMA. Pleasantries were kept to a minimum as Conte’s team explained that they wished to place an order for 2,000 ventilators and wanted an answer by that afternoon.
Instrumental in combatting COVID-19, ventilators assist or replace respiratory functions, pumping oxygen into the blood for vital organs.
Italy currently has about 3,000 ventilators, which appears well short of its needs. As of late last week there were over 2,600 coronavirus patients in intensive care with respiratory problems and each day the number of new infections continues to rise—the virus, meanwhile, has claimed over 4,000 victims in Italy, a grim record that is destined to grow in the coming weeks.
“The spotlight was on us and we knew we had to deliver,” said Gianluca Preziosa. “This was a national emergency and our country needed help.”
Gearing up
Days after that fateful phone call with Conte, as hospitals in northern Italy began to see a surge in numbers of COVID-19 patients in intensive care, the Preziosa family drew up a plan to boost production at their facility just outside Bologna. A typical month sees Siare manufacture 160 ventilators for intensive care units. Now they would need to quadruple their output.
To satisfy the immediate needs of a handful of ICU wards, Preziosa managed to redirect already sold ventilators bound for Asia by talking with GE Healthcare, which distributes Siare’s products overseas in 60 countries. “The General Electric folks in the U.S. and in their Italian office got together and okayed the decision to allow us to prioritize hospitals here in our country given the outbreak Italy was experiencing,” Preziosa said.
As hospitals in Lombardy started to receive these first ventilators, Preziosa had to quickly rethink the assembly of his life-saving machines to fulfill the Italian government’s order. “Usually, each worker is responsible for putting together a whole unit themselves, bringing together the ten sections, from the wheel base to the monitor. Now we had to make a new work flow where people focused just on making one section.”
A medical worker tends to a patient inside the new coronavirus intensive care unit of the Brescia Poliambulanza hospital, Lombardy, Italy, on March 17, 2020. PIERO CRUCIATTI—AFP/Getty Images
To assist Siare’s 35-strong workforce, Rome has dispatched 25 engineers and civilian contractors affiliated with the ministry of defense to help with assembly. “We have people with experience working on tanks who now will dedicate themselves to a new sort of armament—one that is able to combat the virus,” adds Preziosa.
This past week, the new arrivals underwent 48 hours of training and are now getting to work to help relieve exhausted Siare crews who have been operating round the clock, seven days a week. The company is also looking to hire another programmer to assist with the proprietary software the firm uses to run its interactive touchscreen displays.
Keeping things local
As the lone manufacturer of ventilators in Italy, one imagines officials in Rome would have rung the Siare offices earlier in the outbreak, when the focus was on containing the virus in a handful of towns under quarantine in Lombardy.
One factor that may have delayed Rome’s move to contact Siare was the company’s relatively small footprint in Italy—its home market only counts for 10% of its orders. In the early 1990s, Siare, under Gianluca’s father, focused on securing orders from foreign hospitals and clinics after experiencing lengthy delays in receiving payment from healthcare facilities in Italy.
“It would take him a year or more to get paid in some cases from public hospitals. My father wanted to invest in R&D to improve his product line and needed cash flow back then so he looked abroad,” explained Preziosa, who points out that Siare will sell the Italian government its order of ventilators at cost. That gesture, together with the company’s ability to ramp up production has earned it praise from many corners of Italian society. This small company has become a household name in recent weeks.
Donations have flooded in and Preziosa has collected the money into a fund that will go towards assisting one of the hospitals on the front line in the fight against COVID-19. Others have extended offers of assistance, including Ferrari, which is in talks with Siare to help in the procurement of parts for its medical devices.
The newfound attention directed at Siare has again put the spotlight on the importance of countries maintaining critical industries within their borders. In recent weeks, countries such as the U.S. and U.K. have been on the hunt for available ventilators to prepare healthcare providers for the expected surge in COVID-19 cases. Some governments are even restricting local medical equipment companies from fulfilling international orders.
For Preziosa, the opportunity to help his fellow countrymen during one of the nation’s darkest hours goes beyond any sort of monetary compensation or publicity. “You feel an enormous responsibility on your shoulders,” he said. “I’ve never seen my father so emotional. He’s not one to cry. Not at funerals, not at weddings. This is different.”
More coronavirus coverage from Fortune:
—Financial crisis looms as corporate America presses for coronavirus bailout
—Tax deadline moved to July 15 due to coronavirus
—Death rate in China’s coronavirus epicenter is lower than previously thought
—How working parents are navigating childcare during the coronavirus pandemic
—As oil slides on coronavirus and price war, the market looks for the new normal
—Funerals in the time of coronavirus: How a pandemic is changing the industry
—Listen to Leadership Next, a Fortune podcast examining the evolving role of CEO
—WATCH: World leaders and health experts on how to stop the spread of COVID-19
Subscribe to Outbreak, a daily newsletter roundup of stories on the coronavirus pandemic and its impact on global business. It’s free to get it in your inbox.


fortune--2020-03-21--How thinking like a golfer can help you ride out market mayhem

Getting through dramatic market swings like this one takes a few different skills: maintaining focus, blocking out the noise, sticking to a game plan, and making the right decisions in high-stakes, high-pressure situations.
Those are almost precisely the conditions that golfers deal with, says Mason Champion. The senior VP and sports and entertainment director for Wall Street giant Morgan Stanley is a longtime PGA member who manages money for multiple professional tour players. His take: Thriving on the greens—dealing with the highs and lows, avoiding the traps, and being able to move on from adversity—contains some excellent lessons on how to navigate the markets.
“There are hazards and threats on any course, and that’s part of the journey,” says Champion, whose handicap is an impressive 1.3. “Sometimes you see those coming, and sometimes you don’t. But you have to build that expectation into your plan, and then even in an environment as sensitive as the market is right now, it will help you strip out all the emotion and fear.”
That in mind, we talked to Champion and a couple of other prominent golfers-slash-investors—like famed success coach Tony Robbins, author of Money: Master the Game, and Trip Kuehne of Double Eagle Capital Management, once crowned by Golf Digest as the best golfer on Wall Street—about how to survive this ugly round we’re in, and live to putt another day. Their tips:
Have a plan. If you haven’t charted a path forward already, you’re going to be very vulnerable to market hysteria. “The best players in world always have a plan for how they’re going to approach a round,” says Champion. “They have already thought about where they are going to be aggressive, where they’re going to be conservative, and how they’re going to utilize their strengths to navigate that journey. In the same way, you want to have a game plan for your wealth—and then stick to that plan, the best you’re able.”
Focus on the long term. If the market is down 1,000 points one day and up 1,000 the next, that shouldn’t really matter to long-term investors. “The quicker you can forget about that bad shot or that double bogey, the better,” says Robbins, reached before teeing off for a round at Augusta National, home of the annual Masters Tournament. “The market has always had corrections and slumps, and then rebounded to new highs. A single bad shot or a single down year in the market, must be shrugged off on the path to victory. It’s the long game that counts.”
Keep a routine. Sticking to daily positive habits can help anchor you during times of craziness. “If you watch the best players in world, they all have a pre-shot routine they adhere to, which helps them to focus in the moment,” says Champion. “There is a lot of distraction that can occur when you’re standing over a shot, so you need a routine to fall back on. It’s the same in wealth management: An automated routine might mean maintaining a specific savings discipline, like 401(k) contributions, no matter what else is going on.”
Don’t overcomplicate things. “The way I play golf is using one little acronym: KISS, or ‘Keep it simple, stupid,’” says Kuehne, who is close to a scratch golfer. “In these markets, don’t try to be a hero, like trying to call a bottom. Just get the ball on the fairway, make it to the green, and go for par. Then when you start seeing the ball well again, you can start attacking the course and get some birdies.”
Play to your strengths. Your response to market movements may not be exactly the same as the next investor’s, and that’s okay. “My game is different from your game,” says Champion. “There are a lot of different styles on the PGA Tour. Some are better putters, some are better drivers, some are more aggressive than others. You have to understand your own strengths, then design a game plan around those. It’s the same in investing: You may have different risk tolerances, or saving or spending habits, but you need to understand what those are and then leverage them for best results.”
Tune out the noise. The market chatter is almost deafening right now, so put on those noise-canceling headphones and focus on process. “As any golfer will tell you, success comes as much from winning the psychological battle with your own doubts, nerves, and anxieties as it does from technique,” says Robbins. “If you shank it into the bushes, it’s nearly impossible to stand over the next shot and not think about that happening again. The golfer who shuts out all that noise to tap in a five-foot putt to win, is the one who prevails. Many of the greats will tell you that they don’t even hear the crowd once their tunnel vision takes over.”
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fortune--2020-03-21--Businesses seek creative solutions as California winery tasting rooms are ordered to close during th

Businesses seek creative solutions as California winery tasting rooms are ordered to close during the coronavirus pandemic

This article is part of a Fortune Special Report: Business in the Coronavirus Economy—a look at the impact of the pandemic on more than 50 industries.
For wineries throughout the state of California, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s directive on March 15 dealt a blow to the industry: He instructed closures of all tasting rooms (and for many Northern California counties, the new “shelter in place” directive made shutdowns mandatory). Wineries, many of which count the tasting room as a core part of their business, now seek creative ways to generate revenue.
Direct-to-consumer sales now represent 10.8% of all retail sales of domestic wines in the U.S., according to the Sovos ShipCompliant/Wine Vines Analytics 2020 Direct-to-Consumer Wine Shipping Report. Furthermore, this channel grew by 7.4% in value and 7.9% in volume in 2019, according to the same study. For many wineries, especially those producing less than 5,000 cases annually, direct-to-consumer sales constitute a large portion—if not all—of their revenue.
Tyler Russell, owner and winemaker at Cordant and Nelle wines in Paso Robles, Calif., sells everything directly to customers, and his tasting room is his only showcase. “One thing that we have always focused on is knowing that we are not only a winery with a strong mission to make a quality product, but we also identify as a hospitality business,” he says. “We pride ourselves on providing a memorable experience for people. Not being to offer that puts a damper on things, for sure.” In order to maintain business, Russell is offering inclusive shipping on wine orders and operating the tasting room as a pickup point for customer orders.
Tank Garage Winery blends its wines out of a vintage gas station in Calistoga, Calif. Courtesy of Tank Garage Winery
In Napa, Ed Feuchuk, Tank Garage Winery’s vice president of marketing, says that within 90 minutes of Newsom’s announcement, they shut their doors. The announcement hadn’t come as a complete surprise; the winery had proactively been reaching out to customers via email and social media the week before in an effort to be transparent about the uncertainties of the business. Feuchuk anecdotally notes an uptick of orders as a result, and on Sunday, after the governor’s press conference, he says “people really started coming out and supporting us, which has been awesome, and keeping us afloat.”
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As another winery that only sells directly to consumers, Feuchuk calls Tank Garage’s unique tasting room—a refurbished 1930s gas station—the lifeblood of the business. “By cutting that out, you’re effectively just suffocating our business, because that feeds our customer database,” which in turn fuels email campaigns, the wine club, and subscription services, he explains. Even with the recent push, Feuchuk is worried about overall revenue. “I haven’t actually run the numbers yet because I’m afraid to,” he says, half laughing. “I would guess just over the last couple of weeks, we’re probably at least 10% down from expectations, but I don’t know. Our customers are doing an awesome job keeping us up, and we’re just playing it day by day.”
Winery owner Claire Baxter pouring a glass for visitors from Houston at her tasting room in Philo, Calif., Nov. 9, 2019. Erik Castro
Even larger wineries with broader distribution stress every sales channel is vital these days. Charles Krug, one of California’s historic wineries whose tasting room opened in 1882, says direct-to-consumer accounts for 10% of its business. However, with the wholesale portion in flux, the St. Helena–based producer is redoubling outreach to its customer base through new communication initiatives over phone calls, email, and text messages.
“About 25% of our business goes through restaurants,” says Judd Wallenbrock, president and CEO of C. Mondavi & Family (which owns Krug), and the rest through retail. “That 25% of our business, we believe, over probably a four- or five-month period of time, will suffer significantly.”
And support for employees is top of mind, especially in an industry that skews toward part-time and seasonal help. Under the “shelter in place” rule, winemaking and distribution are considered “essential,” so workers involved in production are less affected by tasting room closures. However, for the 12 full-time and six part-time employees working out of the tasting room at Krug, Wallenbrock says, the company is actively redirecting team members to other parts of the business, such as logistics.
Uncorking a bottle at Smith Story Wine Cellars’ tasting room in Philo, Calif., Nov. 9, 2019. Erik Castro
Alison Smith-Story, cofounder (with husband Eric) and president of Smith Story Wine Cellars, which has tasting rooms in Anderson Valley and Russian River Valley, says the timing couldn’t be worse. “We were just seeing a little bit of recovery from the Q4 fires and PG&E power outages of 2019,” she says. To compound the stress, they source grapes from growers, and Smith-Story notes that “grower bills are all due in March each year.”
Leveraging the power of social media (the @smithstorywines Instagram account has 14,900 followers, while the couple’s dog, Lord Sandwich, boasts an impressive 72,900 followers on his @sandwichthedoodle account), the couple stay connected to their clients. “Our customer and fan base is very active; their shares on Instagram, in particular, have brought us new customers and have continued to lift our spirits,” Smith-Story says. They also plan to launch a virtual tasting, dubbed “Smith Story Saturday Night Live” the evening of March 21, as a way to further engage with customers.
Owner Ali Smith dancing with her dog, Lord Sandwich, at the Smith Story Wine Cellars tasting room in Philo, Calif., Nov. 9, 2019. Erik Castro
Despite the hardships, many winemakers are maintaining a positive attitude, tinged with a fiery drive to succeed. “Failure is not an option for us,” says Smith-Story.
Tank Garage’s Feuchuk agrees: “We are going to adapt, we’re going to be nimble, we’re going to be creative, and we’re going to get through this thing one way or another.”
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—The oil sector takes its next hit: The coronavirus on offshore rigs
—Some of the most extreme ways companies are combating the coronavirus
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fortune--2020-03-21--9 books to read ahead of dystopian times

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Postapocalyptic books have been a mainstay of literature since The Book of Revelation. Dystopian fiction has risen in pop culture almost hand in hand with the rise of technology over the past century, as if these authors were trying to warn us about something. And while dystopian books are almost synonymous with Young Adult franchises like Divergent and The Hunger Games, there is both entertainment and education for us all in these books.
Whether it be technology, authoritarian governments, or climate change (none are mutually exclusive), the following titles might offer some amusement or comfort (or additional anxiety—sorry!) over the next few weeks and months of social distancing to come.
Severance by Ling Ma
Perhaps the most eerily close to our present dilemma, the catalyst is a mysterious plague that emerges from a factory in Shenzhen, China. This disease, however, is far more deadly, leaving New York City a ghost town to the point where the heroine of the book—a Chinese-American millennial working in a humdrum job in book publishing—wanders the empty city streets from day to day while living in her empty corporate offices.
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
Don’t read this at an airport or before going to the airport—unless that airport is nice enough that you’d be comfortable living there for the rest of your life. Also involving an even more mysterious and far deadlier disease (the survival rate is basically zero for those who contract it), the book is split between two timelines: before and after the spread. It’s hard to say much more about this book without spoiling it, but you don’t have to wait long once you start—I promise by page three, you’ll be hooked.
The Last Romantics by Tara Conklin
Never judge book by its cover because this one is a subtle—and perhaps more realistic—take on a dire future headed our way. The book centers around a quartet of siblings, following them from childhood in the 1980s and 1990s through adulthood, examining their relationships with both romantic partners and also one another. But based on some of the harrowing and cataclysmic natural disasters referenced by the main character, it’s clear climate change has inflicted its expected wrath by the book’s end (roughly 50 years from now), forcing New York City residents to either hide in weather-resistant bunkers or move far into “the mountains” for survival.
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
There might not be a more lauded postapocalyptic novel than this one, winning the Pulitzer Prize in 2007. It also details all the defining qualities of life after the end of the world: few survivors, extinct wildlife, and a lot of poor weather conditions. But what keeps the reader engaged are the two main characters, a father and son, and their fiercely close bond, demonstrating how humanity will do whatever it can to survive, even when familial love is the only thing left.
The Dog Stars by Peter Heller
Once again a pandemic strikes, seemingly in the present day, and civilization is gone as we know it. It’s hard to discern how many survivors there are as the protagonist—a pilot, which is key to his survival—lives in an abandoned airport (always a favorite setting among writers after the apocalypse) in a more rural part of Colorado. The narrative structure, however, might be hard to follow and off-putting for some, but the poetic style does instill heartbreaking empathy for the hero—and his loyal dog.
Zone One by Colson Whitehead
If you haven’t noticed by now, authors seem to love to ruminate about an apocalyptic New York. Perhaps that’s because as a heavily populated city and the economic capital of the U.S. (if not the world), it’s jarring to consider all of that wiped away and/or abandoned. Zone One refers to a new, erm, neighborhood of sorts in Manhattan, and yes, there is a plague that infects people—but you have to read it to know what it does to them. And what keeps the reader going just as much as the plot is Whitehead’s writing style—descriptive to the point where the scenes come alive in the mind’s eye, but always just the right amount; it’s never flowery.
The Thousandth Floor by Katharine McGee
Another futuristic version of New York—but this one is set exactly 100 years in the future. Parts of the city are recognizable, but there is one setting that is almost unfathomable to imagine. The Thousandth Floor itself refers to the top floor of a skyscraper that is really scraping the atmosphere at 1,000 stories high. (According to one of the book’s characters, he can see the structure from Montauk on Long Island from 120 miles away.)
And the top floors are basically the exorbitantly rich Upper East Side of tomorrow. (Thus, there are a lot of comparisons referring to this series as the Gossip Girl of the future.) The farther you go down, the lower the income level—to the point where the people living on the bottom floors are literally serving the people upstairs. The structure itself seems to span most of Manhattan, with exits referenced at north and south ends of the island, and while the book’s characters do occasionally leave the building, it is clear they don’t make a habit of it, fuzzily inferring at problems with air quality.
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
Regardless of comparisons to the (brilliant) Japanese movie Battle Royale, the setting of The Hunger Games is unique and reflects how adept Collins is at world-building. The country of Panem is a future version of the United States, but it is unrecognizable in both governing and geography.
It has been surmised that catastrophic natural disasters have altered the shape of North America, essentially drowning the coasts, followed by another civil war in a grasp for power. The Hunger Games, as an annual event, is a result of the war’s end—the Capitol inflicting its wrath on 13 districts with a televised contest slaughtering their children. The future is bleak, but the books are entertaining. And now would be a good time to read (or reread) the entire trilogy as Collins will be publishing the highly anticipated prequel, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, on May 19.
The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
The OG plague novel. Written in 1353 and set a few years prior in 1348, 10 young adults from Florence, Italy, decamp to the countryside while the Plague (yes, that plague, the Black Death) ravages their city. To pass the time, each of them tells a story over the course of 10 days, each more imaginative and more biting (and yet perceptive) than the last. The Decameron has been said to be a great influence on the likes of Chaucer and Shakespeare, but even today, it’s a valuable record of not only the physical but also the mental and social effects in the wake of a pandemic.
More coronavirus coverage from Fortune:
—How to get a refund on your Broadway tickets after the coronavirus shutdown
—The oil sector takes its next hit: The coronavirus on offshore rigs
—Some of the most extreme ways companies are combating the coronavirus
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—Amazon tells employees to work from home if they can. Warehouse workers can’t
—Why Dollar General thinks the coronavirus can help business
—The coronavirus may not be all bad for tech. Consider the “stay at home” stocks
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fortune--2020-03-22--King dollar is back, creating a big headache for the global economy at the worst possible time

In normal times, a 1% daily change in the value of the dollar against the euro or the British pound would be a big move. These are not normal times.
The $6.6 trillion-a-day foreign exchange market has experienced dramatic swings similar to those seen on stock exchanges or oil markets in recent days as panicked investors react to the global coronavirus pandemic by dumping everything in exchange for the greenback.
The British pound fell by around 4% against the all-conquering dollar, hitting a 35-year low, Wednesday while Norway’s krone slumped by a staggering 7%. The pound clawed back a bit of lost ground but it’s still trading at Thatcher-era levels.
Who’ll win the war?
In times of tremendous turmoil, the rise and fall of currencies become a proxy bet about the fate of nations. Investors bid up the currencies they believe are best positioned to win a war, or, in this case, a global pandemic that’s infected more than 300,000, killing more than 13,000. This time around, that can explain only part of the dollar’s surge.
The dollar is rising inexorably as investors flock to a trusted safe haven while the currencies of countries perceived as more risky, such as Britain, which is trying to negotiate a post-Brexit trade deal with the European Union at the same time as it must deal with the devastating economic fallout of the coronavirus outbreak, take a beating.
The currencies of oil producers are also being hit after Saudi Arabia and Russia failed to agree on a new oil production-limiting agreement this month, opening the way to an oil price war and a flood of crude just as demand has collapsed because of coronavirus. The euro, strong against most other currencies, hit a three-year low against the dollar last week.
The currencies of many emerging market countries are also under pressure.
The U.S. dollar index, which tracks the U.S. currency against a basket of other currencies, has risen 8% in the last 11 days, hitting a three-year high.
Fear factor
So what is driving the dollar’s persistent strength? In a word: Fear. The coronavirus panic has gripped investors so tightly that they are fleeing risky assets. The price of gold, usually perceived as the ultimate safe haven, has dipped in the last two weeks and even normally safe-as-houses U.S. Treasuries have sold off on some days.
Investors and businesses want cash, and what better cash to hold than the dollar, the world’s leading reserve and trading currency? Foreign companies and governments need dollars to pay off debts in the U.S. currency.
All this has led to a shortage of dollars, or a liquidity problem, which has magnified daily moves in the foreign exchange markets.
“People are just short of dollars and buying them really at any cost because they are going through situations where—especially more at the investor level—they have to deleverage or de-risk and get to benchmark. So anything that is short of dollars and long some sort of higher yielding currency or emerging market instrument, that’s just being unwound. That puts pressure on the dollar, so you get the moves that are as extreme as we’ve seen this week happening,” says Tim Graf, head of macro strategy EMEA at State Street Global Markets.
“And also just generally, financial markets are dislocated in equities, in bonds, you have trading desks working split sites and therefore the communication isn’t as good, the liquidity isn’t as good and that goes for currencies too,” he told Fortune.
The liquidity factor
Premiums paid by investors to swap their currencies for dollars surged last week, reflecting the strong demand for the U.S. currency.
The dollar is rising not so much because “the U.S. is the most attractive economy in this environment, although it probably has that appeal still relative to say Europe or Japan,” Graf said. It was also partly due to “the plumbing of the financial system.”
Overseas banks had a lot of dollar liabilities on their balance sheets while governments and companies in emerging markets issued a lot of dollar-denominated debt, Graf said. At times of market stress, such as now, emerging market currencies depreciate, which in turn increases their dollar funding liability. That leads to currency swap markets, which are used to borrow dollars short-term to cover those liabilities, getting really stressed, Graf says.
“When those markets get very stressed, oftentimes it doesn’t necessarily lead to direct pressure on the spot market, but right now it is,” he said.
The liquidity crisis was aggravated by fears that London, the world’s leading foreign exchange dealing hub, could be “locked down” as part of official measures to contain the coronavirus outbreak. The government has played this down, saying there will be no limits on movement.
Winners and losers
The dollar is up 15% against the Russian rouble since the OPEC+ agreement broke down on March 6 and up by 11% against the British pound since March 9. It’s up 28% against the Mexican peso and 8% versus the Canadian dollar since mid-February.
The Australian dollar slumped to a 17-year low against the U.S. currency last week on fears that its exports of coal and iron ore will be hit by global recession and falling Chinese demand.
The Japanese yen and Swiss franc have been among the few currencies to hold their own against the dollar, as they are also seen as safe havens in a crisis. China’s managed currency has traded in a tight range even though the coronavirus outbreak originated there.
Pros and cons
A strong dollar makes U.S. exports less competitive in overseas markets while making imported goods cheaper for Americans. It’s a potential win for consumers and drag for America’s multinationals, particularly the finance sector.
The dollar’s strength could put further downwards pressure on inflation which has persistently undercut the Fed’s 2% target.
Graf says that’s a problem. “For the U.S., it’s problematic in the sense that the U.S. has an inflation target … (A strong dollar) suppresses U.S. inflation through the trade channel.”
A surging dollar was “detrimental potentially for the U.S. economy and for U.S. nominal growth and particularly U.S. inflation,” he said.
“It’s detrimental really, in this episode, far more for the financial system because a strong dollar basically throws sand in the gears of the financial system whereas the Fed is trying to grease the gears of the financial system. And the dollar really complicates that because global trade is still heavily invoiced in dollars. Therefore global trade finance is transacted in dollars. So a stronger dollar just makes it more complicated for pretty much every global supply chain of significance,” he said.
Fed action
The Federal Reserve has acted to ease the dollar shortage abroad. The Fed and the European Central Bank, plus the central banks of Canada, Britain, Japan and Switzerland, announced coordinated action last Sunday to provide greater liquidity by lowering the pricing of existing U.S. dollar liquidity swap line arrangements.
The swap lines enable other central banks to receive U.S. dollars from the Fed in exchange for an equivalent amount of their currencies provided to the Federal Reserve. All economies need ready access to dollars, the de-facto global currency.
On Thursday, the Fed announced it was setting up similar U.S. dollar liquidity arrangements with the central banks of Australia, Brazil, Denmark, South Korea, Mexico, Norway, New Zealand, Singapore and Sweden. The central banks can then supply those dollars to commercial banks in their countries, which can pass them on to customers.
Graf said these swap lines were starting to ease the stress in the market.
“In aggregate, the dollar swap market looks a lot healthier today than it did say two or three days ago. It’s not quite back to normal. Why it has improved specifically in the last day or two is those swap lines have been opened to other central banks beyond the Bank of Japan, ECB, the Bank of England … The more they expand the scope of swap lines to include emerging market central banks, the better this will get because that’s exactly what happened in the crisis of 2008,” he said.
Could the U.S. weaken the dollar?
For decades, the U.S. has had a strong-dollar policy, believing that its role as a reserve and investment currency requires it to be stable. But President Trump is no fan of the strong dollar. In August 2019, he tweeted: “As your President, one would think that I would be thrilled with our very strong dollar. I am not! The Fed’s high interest rate level, in comparison to other countries, is keeping the dollar high, making it more difficult for our great manufacturers like Caterpillar, Boeing, John Deere, our car companies, & others, to compete on a level playing field.”
As your President, one would think that I would be thrilled with our very strong dollar. I am not! The Fed’s high interest rate level, in comparison to other countries, is keeping the dollar high, making it more difficult for our great manufacturers like Caterpillar, Boeing,….. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 8, 2019
There has been speculation that the U.S. and other central banks could join together in coordinated foreign exchange market intervention to weaken the dollar much in the same way that the Group of Seven major economies banded together to weaken the yen after the 2011 tsunami in Japan.
The Norwegian central bank threatened intervention Thursday to stop the slide in the Norwegian currency, the krone, which has fallen 14% since the OPEC agreement collapsed two weeks ago. “Against this background Norges Bank is continuously considering whether there is a need to intervene in the market by purchasing Norwegian kroner,” it said in a statement.
Graf says he believes there is a better chance of some form of coordinated intervention to weaken the dollar happening than there was two months ago, but he still has doubts. “The issue is who has dollars to sell? Of course the U.S. does. The other owners of reserve currencies—China, Japan, the euro zone to some degree—are they going to really sell that many dollars and drive their own currencies up that much more, especially China, because that entails selling Treasurys which the U.S. probably doesn’t want them to do?”
Interest rates not a factor
Factors that usually influence a currency’s weakness or strength, such as the level of interest rates, inflation, the current account balance, are less important right now than the effectiveness of a country’s strategy for containing coronavirus and avoiding lasting damage to the economy.
Typically, a central bank’s move to slash interest rates and create money to buy government bonds would weaken a country’s currency. But in the current crisis, foreign exchange markets are cheering decisive action by governments and central banks to contain coronavirus and get their economies back on track.
The U.S. government is now pulling out all the stops to lessen the impact of the coronavirus outbreak on the economy. The Trump administration is pressing for a $1 trillion stimulus package (which may go much higher than that) while the Fed has slashed rates to near zero and launched a $700 billion quantitative easing program.
While markets have welcomed decisive government action on coronavirus, there are still lingering fears over the debt governments around the world will build up to pay for these emergency measures.
Why is the pound tanking?
The British pound has fallen sharply in recent weeks—not only against the dollar but also against the euro. Sterling was trading at $1.31 on March 9 but dropped below $1.15 last week before recovering slightly. Make no mistake—that’s a staggering fall.
British authorities have announced 330 billion pounds ($390 billion) to help business cope with coronavirus, and Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government, after initially facing criticism that it had been slow to act to contain the outbreak, has ordered the closure of schools as well as pubs, restaurants and gyms. The British economy was forecast to grow by an anemic 1.1% this year even before coronavirus hit. Now, Britain and the global economy face the prospect of recession.
Talks on Britain’s future trading relationship with the European Union, which it left at the end of January, have been disrupted by the coronavirus outbreak, fueling doubts about whether a deal can be negotiated by the December 31 deadline.
A round of talks in London was canceled last week due to the outbreak and the EU’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier is in isolation after testing positive for the virus. Johnson has ruled out seeking an extension to the deadline, raising fears that the British economy could face another shock if no agreement is reached.
“The U.K. is a twin-deficit economy. We’re talking about huge budget deficits to come. It already has a big current account deficit and that requires funding and therefore you need to build in a concession to attract capital to fund deficits,” Graf said, explaining why the pound was sinking.
“Sterling was also a massive consensus long for most of the (foreign exchange) community—except for us, we were quite short,” he said.
Recovery in the works?
Slumping currencies should eventually recoup some of their losses, says Graf. “There are one or two expensive currencies out there, that is the dollar and possibly the (Chinese) renminbi, depending on how you look at it. Everything else is cheap and especially after this week exceedingly cheap for currencies like Norway, sterling, the Aussie dollar, so yes they will recover. It’s hard to know when that recovery starts and how long it will take.”
In the meantime, it’s king dollar all the way.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—This famed economist doesn’t think we’re headed for another Great Recession
—These estimates of how much COVID-19 will hurt the economy are terrifying
—With the markets in turmoil, the ECB readies a bond-buying bazooka
—Here’s where Goldman Sachs predicts the stock market will bottom out—Listen to Leadership Next, a Fortune podcast examining the evolving role of CEO
—WATCH: What’s causing the looming recession
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fortune--2020-03-21--Diary of a lockdown: What it feels like in 17 cities during the pandemic


fortune--2020-03-22--In a first, NYSE will close its trading floor and conduct remote trading amid coronavirus pandemic

Why the U.S. oil and natural gas industry doesn ’ t want tariffs right now

This article is part of a Fortune Special Report: Business in the Coronavirus Economy—a look at the impact of the pandemic on more than 50 industries.
The coronavirus strikes Wall Street again.
On Monday, March 23, New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) will close its trading floor indefinitely, with traders and market makers working remotely as concerns of contagion continue to disrupt every facet of the financial markets.
It will mark the first time the NYSE has closed the floor on the same day markets are open since it first had a formalized place to buy and sell shares in 1871. The current NYSE floor opened on Apr. 22, 1903.
Physical meetings of traders go back even further—since the Buttonwood Agreement of May 17, 1792, which established what would become the current exchange. The floor has closed dozens of times for extraordinary situations like extreme weather or war—as did the markets themselves on those days.
“The trading floor is an important part of not only our business but the overall financial marketplace,” said John Tuttle, NYSE vice chairman and chief commercial officer.
Typically, about 500 people work the trading floor on a normal day. They include traders as well as designated market makers, or DMMs, who must continuously be willing to buy and sell shares, which helps provide liquidity in stocks and facilitates overall trading. All trading happens eventually on electronic systems, but particularly large or complicated orders—20% of total NYSE volume—involves traders or DMMs.
All DMMs will work remotely while the floor is closed during the coronavirus disruption. Many, if not most other traders, working for various banks and brokerages, who usually appear on the floor, will likely do the same.
The NYSE will still conduct be able to conduct IPOs while the floor is closed. Currently the exchange shows no expected deals.
The broadcast of the opening and closing bells will continue, although the floor will be closed to media. Should the floor closure be a prolonged one, any companies with a schedule IPO on the exchange could still have the opportunity to have the event-listing highlighted, whether physically at NYSE’s headquarters or in some other way.
“We firmly believe, and the data supports, that human beings interacting with increasingly sophisticated technology leads to optimum outcomes,” Tuttle added.
But any reopening will depend on progress in combating the COVID-19 pandemic. With more than 4,400 confirmed cases of coronavirus in New York City as of Friday morning, mayor Bill De Blasio and governor Andrew Cuomo have been calling for more extreme measures to limit the movement of people. For many people working closely with the markets, that means working from home. The NYSE owner, Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), announced the temporary closure this week after two people who work at the exchange tested positive for coronavirus.
“We’ll continue to monitor it, and make a decision to reopen the floor when we believe it makes sense for the overall marketplace and the health and the well-being of market stakeholders,” he said.
Investors will hardly notice
For many investors, especially typical individual ones, the change will be invisible. “Their orders are getting executed electronically,” said Reena Aggarwal, professor of finance and director of the Georgetown Center for Financial Markets and Policy at Georgetown University. “When I’ve gone to the exchange floor, it looks pretty empty,” she added. “More of the [physical activity] is all of the media presence there.”
And the tech is all in working order.
“We’ve [collectively] spent millions and millions of dollars on building out business continuity plans, business redundancy, remote communications,” said Joe Wald, CEO and co-founder of Clearpool Group, a provider of electronic trading solutions and independent agency broker-dealer.
Having a trading floor is unusual in modern global finance. Nasdaq never had one, being fully electronic from its beginning. ICE, the parent of the NYSE, operates a dozen exchanges around the world. Only the NYSE has a trading floor.
But with all the investment over the years in technology and business continuity plans, there are some regulatory complications when traders work from home.
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On its end, NYSE Regulation, the exchange’s compliance arm, already monitors activities in equities, options, and bonds markets and that function will continue when electronic trading is initiated under this temporary arrangement. And trading companies routinely monitor the activity of its employees to document trading, as required by regulations.
However, the work-from-home arrangement could throw up new operational challenges.
“One of the things is monitoring the communications, looking at the phone calls and chats and emails,” said Chris Wooten, executive vice president of NICE Actimize, which develops trading regulatory compliance systems. While the technology exists to do so for anyone at a remote location, some corporations are not yet set to do so as thoroughly for traders working at home with their own computers and phones.
And so, even if remote-trading proves to be business as usual in the days (and possibly weeks) to come, it will also likely serve as a learning experience for a Wall Street institution with 19th century roots.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—This famed economist doesn’t think we’re headed for another Great Recession
—These estimates of how much COVID-19 will hurt the economy are terrifying
—With the markets in turmoil, the ECB readies a bond-buying bazooka
—Here’s where Goldman Sachs predicts the stock market will bottom out—Listen to Leadership Next, a Fortune podcast examining the evolving role of CEO
—WATCH: What’s causing the looming recession
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fortune--2020-03-22--The Supreme Court has shunned technology: Could coronavirus change that?

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The Supreme Court announced on Monday it would shut for two weeks because of the coronavirus—the first such closure in over a century. The cases it has postponed include a closely watched showdown between Google and Oracle, and two involving President Trump’s personal finances.
When the nine justices resume hearing cases—the current plan is to do so in April—they are likely to do so before an empty courtroom or even from their homes. This raises the question of how the country’s top court will ensure the public and the media can witness the justice it metes out. The issue is not trivial: Public access to courtrooms is a bedrock principle of American law.
An obvious way for the Supreme Court to respond is by following the example of other courts and embrace technology like live-streaming to make closed proceedings accessible. But some legal experts are skeptical the court will embrace such a change—even when faced by the dramatic circumstances of the pandemic.
Pneumatic tubes and tradition
On New Year’s Eve 2014, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote about pneumatic tubes—an air-based technology to move documents between floors—in his annual report. He noted the Supreme Court only adopted them in the 1930s, more than four decades after the tubes had been invented. The court continued using them until the 1970s, long after they had been abolished everywhere else.
Roberts’s account highlighted the court’s proud indifference to technology, which still prevails. Former law clerks interviewed by Fortune describe a workplace where paper memos still circulate and where some justices don’t embrace common features of the digital age.
“There was significant variation among the justices when it came to preferences for technology,” says Daniel Rubens, a member of the law firm Orrick’s Supreme Court practice, who clerked for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 2013–-14. “Some are more comfortable than others with emailing and texting.”
Another law clerk who completed his Supreme Court stint last year noted the justices “hate change.” Speaking on condition of anonymity so that he could speak candidly, the clerk called attention to the court’s ongoing ban on cameras and reliance on sketch artists instead.
Such practices reflect how the Supreme Court’s view of technology remains rooted in the 1970s—if not the 1870s—and helps explain why the Supreme Court has shunned live-streaming or even releasing same-day audio of its hearings.
“The justices have resisted any camera technology in the courtroom, and I think that is unlikely to change. It’s a shame,” says Mark Lemley, a Stanford professor who has written extensively about law and technology. “[California’s] Ninth Circuit does a remarkable job of live-streaming all arguments with a two-camera system, and I think it makes the court system much more accessible to the public.”
The top court’s decision to shun technology, however, is rooted in more than stubbornness or antipathy to change. Chief Justice Roberts and others on the court have expressed concern that cameras in court could change the character of oral arguments. Lawyers, for instance, might indulge in grandstanding while justices, who often pose devil’s advocate–style questions, might be more reticent to speak for fear a video clip would be used out of context.
The law clerk who finished at the court last year suggested the justices are also wary of camera footage being used to create memes for social media. While certain justices spend little time online, he said others, including Justice Elena Kagan, are on Twitter, as are all their law clerks.
In an era of intense political partisanship, the reluctance of Chief Justice Roberts and other members of the court to introduce cameras is understandable. It’s a not a stretch to imagine political campaigns using clips of the justices in election ads about abortion, health care, or corporate finance.
Such considerations, however, may hold less sway if the court is forced by the coronavirus to shut its doors for severals months. Calls for change will be magnified, especially given the Supreme Court’s wide discretion to shape its own procedures.
Streaming justice
“Chief Justice Roberts could wave a wand and bring live-streaming in tomorrow,” says Gabe Roth, director of Fix the Court, a nonprofit group that advocates for more transparency in the judiciary.
Roth said his group has had considerable success in recent years in persuading other influential courts to adopt technology. The most prominent of these is the 9th Circuit, which has its own YouTube channel. He points out the 2nd and 4th Circuits have begun to offer live audio streams of high-profile hearings.
Roth predicts that the current crisis will put pressure on the Supreme Court to follow suit. Currently, the court does release audio recordings of its hearings, but only on Friday afternoons, which means the tapes are usually days old.
While the Supreme Court holds itself out as aloof to popular pressure, the former law clerks say the justices follow media coverage of its work closely and are not insensitive to criticism. Such justices will also face new pressure, says Roth, in the form of a campaign by CSPAN and others to ensure there is real-time coverage of the impending Trump financial cases.
One obstacle that does not stand in the way of the justices is the technology itself. According to Rubens, the former clerk for Justice Ginsburg, the Supreme Court has an excellent IT staff and a culture that is open to some types of tech innovation.
“I sense the court could be nimble in a circumstance like this. It will find a way to keep operations going and, if need be, allow law clerks to work from home,” he said.
Change versus consensus
The greatest challenge to bringing any sort of live technology to the Supreme Court may not be IT services or even political considerations. Instead, it is the culture of the court itself.
Supreme Court watchers have observed that prospective justices, during their Senate confirmation hearings, all expressed openness to introducing cameras in the courtroom. Yet by the time they don their high court robes, that openness seems to vanish.
The former law clerks attribute this to the court’s collegial character. Despite the divisions expressed by the justices in their rulings, the court still relies on consensus-based norms in many other respects. Rubens points out that the number of votes to grant a stay or an appeal is not set out in any rule but is instead the result of long-held customs.
This culture also means that, even if newer justices like Kagan or Neil Gorsuch are inclined to introduce cameras in the courtroom, they won’t push to do so out of deference to colleagues like Justice Clarence Thomas, an outspoken opponent of such practices.
This desire to preserve tradition, however, is likely to be met with a growing desire to preserve an another value: openness. The common law is replete with examples of the principle that justice should not just be done, but be seen to be done.
“It is desirable that the trial of [civil] causes should take place under the public eye… not because the controversies of one citizen with another are of public concern,” wrote Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes in 1884, “but because it is of the highest moment that those who administer justice should always act under the sense of public responsibility, and that every citizen should be able to satisfy himself with his own eyes as to the mode in which a public duty is performed.”
Holmes’s words are likely to exercise an influence on even the most tradition-bound Supreme Court justices, as the coronavirus closures continue into the unforeseeable future.
More coronavirus coverage from Fortune:
—Financial crisis looms as corporate America presses for coronavirus bailout
—Tax deadline moved to July 15 due to coronavirus
—Death rate in China’s coronavirus epicenter is lower than previously thought
—How working parents are navigating childcare during the coronavirus pandemic
—As oil slides on coronavirus and price war, the market looks for the new normal
—Funerals in the time of coronavirus: How a pandemic is changing the industry
—Listen to Leadership Next, a Fortune podcast examining the evolving role of CEO
—WATCH: World leaders and health experts on how to stop the spread of COVID-19
Subscribe to Outbreak, a daily newsletter roundup of stories on the coronavirus pandemic and its impact on global business. It’s free to get it in your inbox.


fortune--2020-03-22--Will coronavirus finally get Americans to embrace the bidet?

The panic of 1907 led to the creation of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. The Crash of ’29 brought us the WPA and the Hoover Dam. Might the legacy of the coronavirus crash be…bidets?
Jason Ojalvo certainly thinks so. He’s the CEO of a little five-year-old company in Brooklyn called Tushy. Tushy (hellotushy.com) makes bidet attachments, and sales are skyrocketing as people look for alternatives to TP. “This could be the tipping point that finally gets Americans to adopt the bidet,” Ojalvo wrote in an email this week. The Tushy bidet (the classic, $79, or the spa, $109) is an attachment that connects any standard two-piece toilet to a nearby sink quickly and simply, with no extra plumbing or electricity required. Tushy sales are up tenfold over the past few weeks, after already doubling from a year ago.
A Tushy bidet attaches to your existing toilet. Courtesy of Tushy
The company was founded by Miki Agrawal (who also launched period underwear line Thinx with her sister). Agrawal, who has been the center of some controversy and most recently penned the 2019 book Disrupt-her: A Manifesto for the Modern Woman, helps steer Tushy’s trajectory and brand vision, says Ojalvo. Tushy made its way on to the Goop 2018 holiday gift list and has been the subject of a piece on Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update in 2018 (which hilariously compared TP to eating a chicken wing with a fork and knife, and a bidet to putting a drumstick in your mouth and pulling out a clean bone).
Meanwhile, paper products manufacturers are scrambling to meet increased demand. Both Target and Costco responded to this story with statements about devoting all hands on deck to meeting mounting consumer demands, while Kimberly-Clark and Procter & Gamble would not comment beyond stating that they’re in the process of tweaking the supply chain to adjust to shortages.
Toilet paper startup Who Gives a Crap has entirely sold out of its product in the U.S., posting a note on its site with promises of updates on availability to come. Eric Abercrombie, a spokesperson for privately held Georgia-Pacific, says, “We aren’t currently experiencing production issues, but we are monitoring the situation to see what develops.”
Abercrombie says his company sells to businesses, hotels, theme parks, and other commercial outlets, as well as to retail vendors who meet consumers’ needs at home. With every flu season, Abercrombie says, Georgia-Pacific anticipates dips and surges in sales depending on how travel and sick days wax and wane, but the coronavirus has introduced a new level of market awareness.
Joëlle de Montgolfier, senior director for the retail and consumer products practice at Bain, says we have only started to scratch the surface of what’s happening in retail with toilet paper anecdotes. “It’s a matter of quickly ramping up the production and assembly facility,” she says. “That’s fine until you run into labor shortage. Now we are seeing companies spinning their wheels to quickly respond in fear schools get closed and maybe half of their employees miss work because they have to stay home and take care of their children. It’s not even just the virus. There is an unprecedented exception to the situation that is creating the tension.”
This week, as the fight to find TP intensified, Ojalvo, whose bidets are made in China, has been able to take advantage of his small and nimble structure, creating ads that cheekily play upon the shortage. An ad on Instagram reads, “Toilet paper shortage? Sounds like a First World problem with a First World fix. Get a Tushy bidet. Problem solved. #BIDET2020.” On Facebook, another ad taps into the logic of hygiene: “If you got poop anywhere else on your body, would you just wipe it with paper? Of course you wouldn’t!” Ojalvo says he’s been careful to keep things light, leaning on humor wherever possible. A quick scan of the comments below Tushy’s most recent post shows a lot of love among this new wave of bidet buyers: “So glad I already have a Tushy bidet and can avoid this craziness!” “Watching friends and family melt down over toilet paper is real weird now with Tushy in our life!”
Marketwide, bidets account for roughly $106 million worth of business in North America, according to one report from BRG Building Solutions. The same report also shows that industry sales are expected to grow 15% year over year through 2021. American manufacturer Kohler and Japan-based Toto both make and sell bidets, too, with a range of seat-only and one-piece, full bidet models starting around $300 and those on the fancier end priced in the thousands and equipped with seat warmers and a Bluetooth remote control. In 2017, Kohler reported 33% of the customers they surveyed were “bidet curious” and interested in upgrading their toilets. “When coronavirus became a topic and got serious, I was thinking, ‘Bidets are more hygienic; our sales will go up because of that,’” says Ojalvo. “But then when TP became a thing, that’s what really moved the needle for our sales. It wasn’t people thinking about their health and hygiene. It was like, ‘Uh-oh, there’s no TP! I guess I’ll look at bidets.’”
For now, until the shelves are restocked and the American people go back to their regularly scheduled Target runs, the bidet stands to capitalize on an otherwise, er, sticky situation.
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—Why it’s so hard to find the next Warby Parker
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Editor’s note: This piece has been updated to reflect a further increase in Tushy’s sales over the past few weeks.