COVID crash 2020: the indicators week by week
COVID panic 2020: from February 19, 2020 to May 29, 2020.
Updated
What happened?
The pandemic triggered a 34% fall in the S&P 500 in 33 days, the fastest in history, and a recession of only two months (February to April 2020, according to the NBER). The massive response from the Fed and the Treasury stopped the panic. For this analysis, the episode runs from February 19, 2020 to May 29, 2020.
What would Crisis Monitor have shown?
Recalculating the index each week with the data available at the time, it stood at 18 out of 100 when the decline began and peaked at 83 in May 2020. The index moved to Alert (35 or more) in Mar 2020 (1 month after) and entered Crisis (60 or more) in Apr 2020 (1 month after).
This is a reconstruction made after the fact using weekly data: it helps show how the indicators behave, but it does not guarantee that things will happen the same way again.
How did the data move in that crisis?
From one year before to the end of the crisis. The vertical line marks when it began; the dashed red line is the level beyond which the data point becomes a concern.
Loading the charts…
Which data points warned first?
4 data points entered the stress zone before the crisis began: long vs short rates (3 months), copper vs gold, long vs short rates (2 years), factory output.
Gold and copper are not part of the index, but they help show fear and activity: see how they moved on the gold and copper pages.
The first time each data point entered the stress zone (score 66 out of 100), searching from 12 months before the start. “Before” = it warned before the crisis began; “after” = it reacted late. Note: after another crisis, some data points were still elevated from the previous one.
| Indicator | How does it usually behave? | When did it first become a concern? | When did it warn? | Moment of peak stress |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Long vs short rates (3 months) | Usually warns early | Mar 2019 | 11 months before | -0.49% Aug 2019 |
| Copper vs gold | Usually warns early | Aug 2019 | 6 months before | -42.5% Apr 2020 |
| Long vs short rates (2 years) | Usually warns early | Aug 2019 | 6 months before | -0.03% Aug 2019 |
| Factory output | Moves with the crisis | Oct 2019 | 4 months before | -17.3% May 2020 |
| Stock market fear (VIX) | Moves with the crisis | Feb 2020 | at the start | 75.47 Mar 2020 |
| Credit of ordinary companies | Usually warns early | Mar 2020 | 1 month after | 4.04% Mar 2020 |
| Financial stress (St. Louis) | Moves with the crisis | Mar 2020 | 1 month after | 5.64 Mar 2020 |
| Ease of borrowing | Usually warns early | Mar 2020 | 1 month after | 0.31 Apr 2020 |
| Unemployment benefit claims | Usually warns early | Mar 2020 | 1 month after | 347.9% Mar 2020 |
| Store sales | Moves with the crisis | Apr 2020 | 2 months after | -7.6% Apr 2020 |
| Consumer sentiment | Usually warns early | May 2020 | 2 months after | -27.7 pts May 2020 |
| Recession probability | Moves with the crisis | May 2020 | 3 months after | 100.0% May 2020 |
| Rise in unemployment (Sahm rule) | Moves with the crisis | May 2020 | 3 months after | 4.00 May 2020 |
| Dollar strength | Moves with the crisis | Never became a concern | — | 102.49 Mar 2020 |
| Credit of risky companies | Usually warns early | FRED only publishes the last 3 years of this series (ICE license) | ||
Does the current moment resemble that crisis?
Score from 0 to 100 for each area, today and at different moments of that crisis.
| Loading the comparison… |
How does everything look now? See the live dashboard.