Predicting the implications or extent of the outbreak is impossible today.   One thing known is the market will always pick up the fear symptom of itchy sell fingers.   As pointed out,  this scare comes at a crucial time (near recent tops) and a story like this brings out the profit takers/ sellers no matter what,  thus a lower a market.    It is too early and might be a waste in days to dwell on the bug,  so chasing or shorting sub sectors is irrelevant at this juncture.   Also, the macroeconomic landscape was very different during SARS,  plus there is also treatment for this bug.   Any sector experiencing a hit may see those losses vanish quite quickly,  so be careful if playing this evolving story.   Did you know that Airlines actually did well in SARS?  There is some stupid ideas out there,  like online gaming stocks will prosper as people will stay home.  Anyone ever hear of internet ‘public’ cafes where most this gaming takes place worldwide.   This a temporary scenario now and people need to differentiate this from a permanent story.    If this ‘bug ’ever becomes a permanent story,  you won’t need to worry about sub sector plays, you’d just be able to short the broad market!.   Unfortunately,  we’d never be able to leave our homes and travel anywhere with our winnings!.

What we need to avoid now is any other negative headwind  to join this story.   If this occurs,  the market will be getting it’s medicine at support SPX 840  and will see if that underlying bid prevails again.   Today, the market showed its usual resilience and surprised many,  but a close at lows of the day..is a close at lows of the day and a negative.   

Overall,  a very quite day on the tape with trading flows light.  We’d concentrate on individual plays/ sec’s as earnings season rolls on this week.  We kept this premise string going (LVS, WYNN, PENN ) by adding MVSN  in the mid $19’s and it made new highs sooner than we thought.