SYDNEY/TOKYO: Stock and currency markets in Thailand, South Korea and Australia are bearing the brunt of investors' scramble to hedge the mounting risks from a new viral outbreak in China during a long holiday on the mainland.
In the week since the spreading coronavirus became a mainstream market concern, every hour has brought headlines of mounting cases or another Chinese city shutting public transport or a country telling citizens not to travel.
It was a shift made all the more prominent by the closure of Chinese markets for the week-long new year holiday, which has forced investors to hedge through proxies. "Normally, in a situation like this, people would want to be long in countries with current account surpluses, like South Korea, Singapore or Taiwan, but you cannot because of their correlation with China," he said, adding that was why he was avoiding the Korean won.
That demand for cheap hedges has seen implied volatility on offshore yuan rise by about a percentage point across tenors in the past week. Optimists argue that this episode would not be a repeat of the 2003 outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome , in part because Beijing had acted more quickly and radically this time.
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