The Covid Rotation

Yesterday morning we got the news that Pfizer’s mRNA Covid vaccine developed in partnership with BioNTech saw 90% efficacy in phase three clinical trials. While this is terrific news, Wall Street saw it as bad news for companies that are doing well during this pandemic (Zoom, Peloton, e-commerce, etc).

This is a chart of Jim Cramer’s Covid 100 index:

Wall Street believes the end of the Covid pandemic is in sight and is rotating out of this group. I see that as terrific news, even though I am a large holder of a name or two in that index.

I cannot wait until I can start meeting entrepreneurs again in person. I cannot wait until USV can meet together in person. I cannot wait until I can see live music, movies, theater, etc, etc. These things cannot come soon enough for me.

But I also wonder how many of the habits we acquired during this pandemic (which is NOT over yet), will stick when we can go back to doing all of these things we long to do.

Here are some questions to ponder:

1/ Will our use of Zoom to meet decline materially when the pandemic is over?

2/ Will we get back on planes and resume our business travel like we did before the pandemic?

3/ Will we go back to the spin studio even though we learned to love a spin class on our Peloton?

4/ Will we rush back to stores and abandon our e-commerce habits?

5/ Will we all go back to the office five days a week?

I think the answer is yes to a degree, but almost certainly not totally. We have created new habits in this awful year and they are not going to go away so quickly, or ever.

I don’t know if that means the Covid 100 index is a buying opportunity or it needs to go down some more. I will leave that to Jim Cramer.

I do know that the way we work and live and entertain ourselves has changed materially and forever in this pandemic and things won’t be exactly the same when it is over.