Sweden Goes it Alone Against Covid
You can get a haircut in Sweden right now. You can go shopping, dine at a restaurant, go to work or school. It’s no surprise that choosing herd immunity and subsequently dropping the ball on care homes ended up leading to international condemnation.
It’s no surprise, but it’s also no fair!
The Swedes are notoriously disease-resilient with an average of only four sick days per head, per year, and these happy people claim the world’s lowest rates of obesity. The population has no fear; it’s accepted a virus will spread, and a mild cough will go around.
This has gotten traders looking closely at currency pairs for the Swedish Krona. The country’s economy is expected to print a shrink this year of around six percent compared to eight percent across the rest of Europe (gross domestic product growth). If those forecasts can be matched or beaten, EUR/SEK makes a great short.
According to one of our polls, Sweden’s IKEA would be the Invstr community’s favorite private company to go public. It doesn’t look likely, a charity, technically, but there’s still a stock exchange index to track in Sweden, not to mention stay-at-home stock, Spotify!
The only way this trade can go bad is if an effective vaccine becomes available tomorrow. That would undermine progress made towards herd immunity because we’re still months from a fabled tipping point. It obviously requires a sacrifice to get there, but if there’s a second wave, bank!
