As Coronavirus Spread, Reports of Trump Administration’s Private Briefings Fueled Stock Sell-Off

“Short everything,” was the reaction of the investor, using the Wall Street term for betting on the idea that the stock prices of companies would soon fall.

That investor, and a second who was briefed on the Hoover meetings, said that aspects of the readout from Washington informed their trading that week, in one case adding to existing short positions in a way that amplified his profits. Other investors, upon reading or hearing about the memo, stocked up on toilet paper and other household essentials.

The memo was written by William Callanan, a hedge fund veteran and member of the Hoover board. A research institution at Stanford University that studies the economy, national security and other issues, Hoover has been directed since September by Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state under President George W. Bush. Its board includes the media mogul Rupert Murdoch and the venture capitalist Mary Meeker, neither of whom attended the meetings in February, which were a series of informal, off-the-record discussions with Trump administration officials and Republican lawmakers.

Mr. Callanan described the Hoover briefings in a lengthy email he wrote to David Tepper, the founder of the well-known hedge fund Appaloosa Management, and one of his senior lieutenants about the level of concern among American officials over the spread of the virus domestically. In the email, he also touched on how ill-prepared health agencies appeared to be to combat a pandemic.

Inside Appaloosa, the email circulated among employees, who in turn briefed at least two outside investors on the more worrisome parts of Mr. Callanan’s email, according to people who received those briefings.

Those investors in turn passed the information to their own contacts, ultimately delivering aspects of the readout to at least seven investors in at least four money-management firms around the country within 24 hours. By late afternoon on Feb. 26, the day the email bounced from Appaloosa to other trading firms, U.S. stock markets had fallen close to 300 points from their high the previous week.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/14/us/politics/stock-market-coronavirus-trump.html