Welcome to Thoughts on the Market.

I'm Ellen Zentner, Chief U.S. economist for Morgan Stanley Research.

And I'm Adam Fergadamo, U.S. equity and thematic strategist.

And on this episode of the podcast, we'll be talking about the path ahead of U.S. economy

post-COVID, as well as some areas where markets might be mispricing the reopen.

It's Tuesday, March 9th at 9am in New York.

So Ellen, you recently said the path of COVID-19 and vaccinations seemed to be tracking

fairly closely to the base case you projected last year.

At the same time, though, the economy is actually on track for a faster recovery than you

had expected.

What sped up that timeline?

So I think one, the stimulus that was passed at the end of last year put us on track

for GDP tracking in the first quarter of around 8%.

So that's incredibly robust start to the year.

I also think that while the vaccine process on a broad timeline is in line with our expectations

that we would be vaccinating the broader population starting in April, the actual number

of shots and arms and the amount of doses we're giving each day has ramped up more quickly

than we had expected.

And at the same time, the reopening has progressed earlier in the year than we had expected.

So we've already started to bring back more jobs at a surprising rate as early as February.

So the Biden administration is in the process of passing its $1.9 trillion COVID relief

package.

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