So I would invest boldly in the broader stock market in index funds at this moment and government treasuries indexes are good options too, all of this is really depending on your timeline. With that being said, I am comfortable with those market-based investments, and know what I am looking for. If you want to buy properties, use GOVT bond indexes, if you have a long horizon, use market US indexes, and stay away from international/China-related funds. China and the US are going to go to blows over this, and it won't be pretty.
However, when it comes to real estate, I would be more in the stashed cash and hold positions that most people are talking about. Banks that are limiting commercial lending see COVID for what it is. No amount of positive spin, BS, or wishful thinking will change the fact that cities and states aren't allowing more than 10-30 people into businesses at a time. Loaning people money for commercial properties where the margins of businesses in those commercial properties are already tight (i.e. restaurants, bars, department stores, and others) is largely ill-advised. This virus will likely speed up the death of most malls and cause shifts in spending patterns and changes in the economy. If we were to take a crystal ball it is easily seen how Amazon, eBay, and online retailers start to flourish. Also, staple companies will be strong, but there will be a large pullback in the "discretionary" spending of consumers. If you didn't lose a job with the downfall of those aforementioned commercial industries, you will ultimately be spending less money at bars and restaurants. Thus it is pretty easy to see the potential economic ripple effect that this may have on our country.
Now for the real health care focus of the discussion. COVID is a virus that China didn't tell us about, China has kicked out US reporters, and has the WHO in their back pocket. The US saw a smallish outbreak in New York, that put a strain on their healthcare system and taxed their ability to perform routine clinic functions, routine surgeries, and other roles. Other states locked down their economies quicker, and thus the "flattening" of the curve occurred all over the US. When they talk about flattening, what they truly mean is did we not over-run hospitals' ability to take COVID patients. True flattening would mean complete suppression of this disease and that is not going to happen. No matter what your politics are, we need to look at places in the world and evaluate their responses. The media in this country collectively do a poor job of telling people the truth about numbers, staying on stories for more than 3 seconds, and reality. China is lying and most likely not testing everyone, they hoarded PPE, wanted to solve this without US help, and are ready for worse outbreaks in other populated areas of their country. Their data is garbage, any study, research, or result from them just consider it false. There is a culture of manipulation, lying and cheating in China that people in the US can't fathom. Who can we trust? Europe seems to be reliable. Spain and Italy are showing massive death tolls, and aren't hiding anything about their failures. Also, Sweeden took a completely different approach, they said, "People that are old and have health issues, STAY HOME, others go out and go on with your lives" (I am unsure of their social distancing policy, but I don't believe that they had one). They believe that they are weeks away from achieving, "Herd Immunity" by allowing the virus to run through their healthy population, they have had a lower death toll than New York and may not see what some people are calling the "Fall spike". Now in the fall, Sweeden may actually have a huge issue where the people who were first infected become severely ill after getting re-infected, or ultimately they will end up being proven right. We need to watch places we can trust, their responses, fatality rates, and follow the science closely. Finding a vaccine may take years, finding treatments may take years, and we need to see what people are seeing in the research and follow those models. If we find one treatment or vaccine that works and lowers overall death numbers the economy will roar back, if we are still sitting and waiting, by next November, it will be a tepid recovery.
Currently knowing all of this we are currently at the bottom of what our newish normal is, people are going to go back to work and we will likely see a massive retail recession. I would stash cash, and wait for a few months because a larger blood bath is likely to occur. It just hasn't happened yet, and in the fall we will start to see the retail closures and thus the resulting falling of housing prices. That is when I plan to try and buy. If I am wrong and the economy roars back, earlier, then we likely solved COVID. I am okay with being wrong.
