Of all the trends swirling around in the market this morning, the performance of US and Chinese equities relative to their YTD highs has to be one of the more surprising ones.

Based on where equity futures are trading this morning, the S&P 500 would be down 3.91% from its YTD highs earlier this month while the Nasdaq would be down over 5%. So how much is the Chinese market down? Barely more than 3%. Just for reference, there have been a total of more than 75,000 coronavirus cases in China so far, including more than 500 today.  So far in the US, there have been a total of 35 confirmed cases. 

Today, with the S&P 500 set to open down more than 2.5%, China’s Shanghai Composite fell just 0.28% on the day.