now wash your hands

I thought I'd have a look at the shorters. The people who are trading stocks against the market. Betting on a crash and making a large profit. Some could say it is exploiting the coronavirus for financial gain.

Let's see, there's BlackRock, Citadel, D1 Capital, and Adelphi Capital betting against a blend of airlines, cruise companies, movie theatres, and mall owners. There's a few information providers to help these companies operate. A helpful diagram from Breakout Point explains the process.

Carnival Cruises has been targeted by BlackRock. Some might remember that George Osborne works for that company. Carnival owns the Princess cruise line, which made headlines with those infected passengers in Japan.

Allegedly the short created gains of roughly $75 million.

Rick Rieder oversees $2.3 trillion as chief investment officer of global fixed income at BlackRock and offers predictions about areas of the credit and stock markets where investors with medium to long time horizons could shop for cheap assets.

Citadel decided to go after the airlines, building short positions on European airlines including Lufthansa, which has fallen by roughly a fifth since last week. Other Citadel shorts included Air France, EasyJet, Wizz Air, and SAS. Lufthansa and Air France have generated around $77 million in gains for Citadel.

The shorters are moving in on the early effects of social isolation now, targeting shopping malls and movie chains. No doubt they are building a 'Top of the Pops' chart of the expected order of misfortune.

D1 Capital placed a large short position against EPR Properties, which owns the real estate of hundreds of movie theatres, golf courses, ski resorts, and other "experiential" venues, as well as London-based Cineworld, which has seen its stock price fall by roughly a third since the start of the year.

Adelphi Capital shorts against three different European real-estate companies - all of which run shopping malls — two Dutch companies, Wereldhave NV and Eurocommercial Properties NV, and Hamburg-based Deutsche EuroShop AG.

Of course, shorting the pound is another more abstract approach. There's a well-known fund that moved to Dublin ahead of Brexit to clear its trades inside the EU. It bet against the pound around Brexit time and made a tidy sum. One of its part-owners, a well-known MP, must have been pleased to trouser several million. I suppose the ongoing pound drift is further encouragement to the shorters. Pass the hand gel. Then watch this FT conference call.