(New York)

You may be wondering what is guiding the market right now, but in reality it is pretty simple. It is the combination of the prospect for reopening the economy, blended with the early results of vaccines that would help accelerate that process. This morning’s pre-market trading was another sign—new promising vaccine news sent S&P 500 futures up 1.5%.

FINSUM: If you want to predict the market, just pay very close attention to pharma news. Stocks in the sector have seen huge bumps because of vaccine hopes, and it is driving the whole market.

(New York)

The stock market may be complicated right now, but some things are abundantly clear. One of those is how the retail sector, and retail stocks in general, are going to react to the crisis. The answer is that big players are going to continue to grow, largely at the expense of smaller retailers. Bigger companies, with sophisticated websites and massive free shipping operations, have been thriving as small companies falter.

FINSUM: Think Amazon and Walmart, maybe Shopify (see other story about Shopify from today), as these companies will be the ones winning orders from customers over the short and long-term.

“While PPP has gotten the bulk of media attention, millions of small business owners are just as upset about EIDL Advance payments”, says Duncan MacDonald-Korth, co-creator of COVID Loan Tracker. “The problem was so bad that we decided to build a tracking tool to help small business owners understand where their application stood”.

COVID Loan Tracker, which started last month to help small business owners find out when and where PPP money was flowing, says that the SBA has not been paying EIDL Advances on the “first come first serve” basis that they promised. “We have mountains of evidence showing that the SBA is not paying these in the order they were received”.

EIDL Advances were supposed to be $10,000 paid to each applicant within three business days. Fast forward around seven weeks and most have still not received it, and those who do only get $1,000 per employee.

As a response, COVID Loan Tracker has built a tracking tool that helps small business owners see where they are in the SBA’s process. In particular, it shows whether others who applied at the same time have been paid, or if those who applied later have been paid ahead of you.

Find the tracker here

Instructions for the EIDL Advance Tracker:
1. Fill out the survey
2. Refresh the page
3. Enter your application number into the tracker and it will automatically show results (note: you may have to wait 10 seconds or so for the tracker to reflect your survey submission)

(New York)

An event happened this week in the commercial real estate space that feels as though it might be seen as a canary in the coal mine for the forthcoming real estate crisis. The largest (and probably most famous) mall in the US—Mall of America—just fell behind on its $1.4 bn mortgage payments. The owner of the mall, which features over 500 stores and a theme park, missed its mortgage payments in both April and May, reports the Financial Times via Wells Fargo documentation. The owner, called TripleFive Group, has reported to Wells Fargo that it has suffered hardship because of COVID. Presently, nationwide about 1 in 5 loans bundled in CMBS are now on “watch lists”.

FINSUM: For context here, Macerich, which is one of the biggest mall owners in the country, disclosed that is has only collected 18% of rent it is owed in May.

(Washington)

The Center for Disease Control made a pretty worrying announcement today. The CDC has previously warned that American could see a big uptick of the COVID-19 virus in the Fall, when temperatures cool down and flu season ramps up. It echoed that more strongly this week, citing evidence that the virus is gaining ground in the southern hemisphere as their winter takes hold. According to Robert Redfield, head of the CDC, “We’ve seen evidence that the concerns it would go south in the southern hemisphere like flu [are coming true], and you’re seeing what’s happening in Brazil now … And then when the southern hemisphere is over I suspect it will reground itself in the north”.

FINSUM: The reality is that a vaccine will not be ready before the next flu season starts, so it is pretty easy to imagine that the virus might see a big second wave in the Fall that leads to another lockdown.