Welcome to Thoughts to the market. I'm Andrew Sheets, Chief Cross Asset

Strategy for Morgan Stanley. Along with my colleagues bringing a variety of

perspectives, I'll be talking about trends across the global investment landscape and how we put those ideas together.

Though I'm typically coming to you from Morgan Stanley's London headquarters, today, like many of our

listeners, I'm working from home. Hence, the sound quality may be a little bit different.

It's Friday, March 20th at 2 p.m. in London.

Today I want to talk about something a little different.

The last week has seen a number of major policy announcements designed to combat the effect of the

coronavirus outbreak on the financial markets.

Yet the step that would seem most impactful based on the number of investors I've spoken

to would be increasing U.S. testing.

There's no other way to put it. This market is disorienting.

It's disorienting because most investors aren't medical experts.

It's disorienting because many investors,

myself included, are trying to social distance by working from home. It's

disorienting because markets have seen unprecedented volatility. Through

Wednesday, the S&P 500 had moved 4% or more on seven consecutive days.

That's never happened in the 90 plus years where we have data, even during the Great Depression.

Those large swings have been I've spent a lot of time recently talking with investors

about what needs to happen before they'd be comfortable getting back into the market.

Recently, we've gotten a little bit more optimistic with our allocation based on a large

improvement to valuations and aggressive action by Central Banks. But when I discuss this view, most

...