For the 4th time this month, the circuit breakers have kicked in and pulled the plug on the stock market for a 15 minute period to allow the market to settle.

Markets are running scared and the volatility can be expected until we get real data on where we stand with the coronavirus.

“There’s no clarity. We don’t know what the real effects from these monetary and fiscal policies are going to be for a while. We need to see data that shows that the infection rate has peaked.” Rich Sega, Global Chief Investment Strategist at Conning.

The 7% circuit breaker kicked in this afternoon. Today’s nosedive, coupled with the losses over the last several weeks, have basically wiped out all the gains the stock market has experienced since Trump was elected.

Falling knives

The market seems to be like catching falling knives and simply no amount of stimulus seems to be calming the market right now. Even President Trump’s tone has somber and serious, sparking deeper speculation about how the situation actually is.

Recession is imminent

Experts are saying that we are not going to escape a recession, the only questions are how deep does it go and for how long.

“This is a severe blow to investor confidence and a severe blow to household net worth. We’re certainly not going to escape a recession. Now the question is how deep?” Doug Ramsey, Chief Investment Officer at Leuthold Group.

Globally the coronavirus has topped 200,000 cases and more than 8,000 have succumbed to the virus so far. The US and Europe are the new hot spots for the coronavirus outbreak and Wall Street is running scared.

We can see geometric growth in the US. Just last week the US was at 1,000 confirmed cases, today they are at over 7,000 confirmed cases. All things being equal, if the growth rate continues, 1 week from now there will be almost 50,000 confirmed cases, and this does not bode well for the health care system nor the markets.