QUIVER NEWSLETTER:
MARCH 2020

As the outbreak of COVID-19 has created chaotic market conditions, many investors have turned to alternative data to quantify the impact of the virus on Chinese production and the global supply chain. Over the last few weeks, the spread of COVID-19 has caused many Chinese factories to grind to a halt, threatening global supply chains. The intensity and length of this shutdown will have huge implications for future market conditions.

In order to quantify the impact of the virus, we have begun aggregating hourly air pollutant indices from some of China's largest industrial centers, and tracking their trends over time. This data can be used as a proxy for industrial activity in these cities, and gives clues on the status of China's recovery.

Our data shows that over the past week, pollutant levels have been rebounding to levels seen before the epidemic. This seems to indicate that many Chinese factories are coming back online, and that their output will soon be returning to normal levels. Of course, longer-term effects of the Coronavirus and the possibility of future factory closures remains to be seen. Over the next few weeks, we hope to add more data sources to give a more complete picture of the impact from the virus.

Wendy's (NASDAQ:WEN) has built a huge Twitter following through viral marketing and lighthearted banter with other corporate accounts. This month was no different, as the brand's social media team built hype for their upcoming breakfast menu, and fired shots at McDonald's and Burger King. This activity netted them almost 107,000 new followers in February, a 3.02% growth.

FEMSA (NYSE:FMX), the Mexican beverage and retail company, also grew rapidly last month, with a 5.26% increase in followers.

On the other hand, Abercrombie & Fitch (NYSE:ANF) continued a long-running decline, with a 0.31% decrease in followers, and remains one of the few major retail chains with a shrinking Twitter presence. Over the past 12 months, A&F has lost over 17,000 followers on the platform.

Visit our Twitter dashboard to view trends and follower counts for all NYSE companies.

On February 27th, Quiver was featured in Bloomberg's Money Stuff blog. In the article, Matt Levine linked to one of our tools, which tracks daily activity on the retail investing forum r/WallStreetBets. Levine writes: "I certainly hope that some real professional quant investors are using a 'popular on Reddit' signal for their trading. I always read about quants using 'Twitter sentiment' signals, and anecdotally it sure seems like r/WSB sentiment is more predictive." With Quiver, you can use both!