The Wall Street Journal - USA (2020-12-07)

A6| Monday, December 7, 2020 ** THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

added to their recent gains last

week as Wall Street weighed

discussions in Congress about

coronavirus relief. Investors in

the coming week will monitor

data on U.S. jobless claims and

inflation in November, with

some worried that a continu-

ing rise in coronavirus cases

will hamper the economy and

immediate demand for indus-

trial commodities this winter.

Still, accelerating factory

activity in the U.S. and China

in recent months has been a

boon for metals producers.

Manufacturing has so far led

the world economy out of the

downturn, outpacing service

industries such as travel and

leisure that are still struggling

under coronavirus restrictions.

“Things are booming,” said

Jay Sandler, president of Impe-

rial Zinc Corp., a Chicago-based

manufacturer of zinc and alu-

minum products. During lock-

downs earlier in the year, the

outlook was dark. Now, em-

ployees are working overtime

to keep up with demand, par-

ticularly from car makers.

A flurry of buying in China

is leading the way. Net imports

of refined copper in the world’s

second-largest economy are on

course to rise to a record 4.

million metric tons this year,

according to Goldman Sachs,

with the government’s strategic

stockpiling of commodities

contributing to the demand.

That is driving a rebound

for large metals producers

that earlier in the year suf-

fered big drops in revenue and

were forced to cut spending.

“We’re all pumped up

here,” said Richard Adkerson,

chief executive of Freeport-

McMoRan, the largest copper

miner based in the U.S. “All

these plans that we have are

accelerated,” he said. Those

include paying down debt, re-

instating and increasing the

dividend paid to shareholders

and investing in mines.

Some analysts expect cop-

per prices will eventually rise

to around their 2011 record,

and investors are betting that

vaccine distribution will con-

tribute to that climb. Candice

Bangsund, a portfolio manager

at Fiera Capital, increased her

investment in Canadian stocks

this summer to wager on

higher commodity prices.

“The visibility alone has

created a lot of momentum,”

in recent years because of
trade tensions between the
U.S. and China, even before
pandemic lockdowns dented
demand.
The climb highlights the
scope of the recent market
rally, which propelled major
stock indexes to highs. Vac-
cine-trial results and U.S. Pres-
ident-elect Joe Biden’s victory
eased sources of angst on Wall
Street, fueling bets that eco-
nomic-stimulus measures will
further juice asset prices.
With stocks at records and
bond yields still near all-time
lows, some of that money is
now moving toward raw mate-
rials, which remain well below
their historic peaks.
“The two big unknowns
have resolved themselves, and
all we have now is a massive
pump of money coming into
the economy,” said Darius Ta-
batabai, a portfolio manager
at metals trading firm Arion
Investment Management.
Stocks and commodities

Continued from Page One

wards filling up, the govern-

ment made a U-turn. In an emo-

tional televised address on Nov.

22, Prime Minister Stefan

Löfven pleaded with Swedes to

cancel all nonessential meetings

and announced a ban on gather-

ings of more than eight people.

“Authorities chose a strat-

egy totally different to the rest

of Europe, and because of it

the country has suffered a

lot,” said Piotr Nowak, a phy-

sician working with Covid-

patients at the Karolinska Uni-

versity Hospital in Stockholm.

Last week Sweden’s total

coronavirus death count

crossed 7,000. Neighboring

Denmark, Finland and Norway,

all similar-sized countries, have

recorded since the start of the

pandemic 878, 415 and 354

deaths respectively. For the

first time since World War II,

Sweden’s neighbors have closed

their borders with the country.

Dr. Nowak said medical per-

sonnel had never shared the

optimism of the country’s pub-

lic-health agency about so-

called herd immunity and had

repeatedly warned that the vi-

rus couldn’t be controlled with

voluntary measures alone.

One reason Sweden stuck to

its approach for so long is the

high degree of independence

and authority the health

agency and other similar state

bodies have under Swedish law.

The public face of the coun-

try’s pandemic strategy was

Anders Tegnell, Sweden’s chief

epidemiologist.

Dr. Tegnell declined to be in-

terviewed this week, but in ear-

lier conversations with The Wall

Street Journal and other media

he said lockdowns were unsus-

tainable and unnecessary. His

agency has continued to dis-

courage mask-wearing just as

the European Center for Disease

Prevention and Control, a Euro-

pean Union agency whose head-

quarters are located near Dr.

Tegnell’s office in Stockholm,

recommends wearing them.

In recent months, Dr. Tegnell

predicted Swedes would gradu-

ally build immunity to the virus

through controlled exposure,

that vaccines would take longer

than expected to develop, and

that death rates across the

West would converge.

Instead, the West’s first

coronavirus vaccine was au-

thorized in Britain last week,

Sweden’s death rate remains

an outlier among its neigh-

bors, and Dr. Tegnell acknowl-

edged in late November that

the new surge in infections

day. Total reported infections

in the U.S. surpassed 14.7 mil-

lion on Sunday.

In California, 30,000 new in-

fections were reported Sunday,

a single-day record for the

state, and more than 10,

people are hospitalized.

Southern California, includ-

ing the major metro areas of

Los Angeles and San Diego, and

the San Joaquin Valley, will be

U.S. NEWS

under stay-at-home orders

through the Christmas holiday.

The two regions, collectively

home to 27 million people, will

see at least a three-week clo-

sure of businesses like bars,

hair and nail salons, and the-

aters, and public spaces like

playgrounds and museums.

A new order from Gov. Gavin

Newsom triggers the restric-

tions when intensive care unit

capacity in any of the state’s

five regions falls below 15%.

“We are at a tipping point

in our fight against the virus,

and we need to take decisive

action now to prevent Califor-

nia’s hospital system from be-

ing overwhelmed in the com-

ing weeks,” Mr. Newsom said

when he announced the order

Thursday.

Other states including Dela-

ware, Michigan, Minnesota,

Washington and Oregon have

imposed new restrictions or is-

sued advisories to slow the

spread of the virus ahead of the

holiday season.

Nationally, the number of

people hospitalized because of

Covid-19 was 101,190 on

Saturday, the most recent data

available from the Covid

Tracking Project show, after

hitting a single-day record of

101,276 on Friday.

Newly reported Covid-

cases in the U.S. were above

200,000 for the fourth straight

day, as the number of deaths

linked to the virus in the coun-

try surpassed 282,000.

Nationally, 213,875 new

cases were reported on Satur-

day, according to data compiled

by Johns Hopkins University,

down from 227,885 a day ear-

lier. The Johns Hopkins data

showed 2,254 new deaths.

Days earlier, the U.S. broke

single-day records for deaths

and hospitalizations.

The new restrictions in Cali-

fornia require not only the clo-

sure of certain businesses and

services, but also prohibit gath-

erings with members of other

households, and require people

to stay at home except for es-

sential activities. Schools that

are open now can stay open,

and churches and other houses

of worship are allowed to have

outdoor services only.

As with the last month’s cur-

few ordered by Gov. Newsom,

some sheriffs from California

say they won’t be enforcing the

new restrictions.

“These closures and stay-at-

home orders are flat out ridicu-

lous,” said Chad Bianco, the

sheriff of Riverside County,

which has nearly 2.5 million

residents.

A spokesman for the Gover-

nor’s Office of Emergency Ser-

vices didn’t respond to a re-

quest for comment.

As California hospitals fill up
with Covid patients, tough new
restrictions intended to slow
the spread of the virus were
taking effect Sunday night for
tens of millions of residents of
the nation’s most populous
state.
The restrictions come after
new infections surged in
California and across the coun-
try following the Thanksgiving
holiday.
Nationally, new infections
reported in the U.S. topped 1.
million last week, with the
seven-day average hitting a re-
cord of 190,948 infections a

BYZUSHAELINSON

California’s New Restrictions Take Effect

Stay-at-home orders

in major regions come

as a single-day record

for infections is set

A customer waited for a to-go order Sunday in San Francisco.

STEPHEN LAM/REUTERS

TOKYO—An enduring mys-

tery of the Covid-19 pandemic is

why East Asian countries across

the board have experienced far

fewer cases and deaths than the

U.S. and Europe.

Some doctors and scientists

are beginning to take a closer

look at theories that some peo-

ple in East Asia and Southeast

Asia have had different expo-

sure to previous coronaviruses

resembling the SARS-CoV-2 vi-

rus sweeping the globe. Such

exposure could have protected

them from getting sick from

Covid-19 or lessened the sever-

ity of the disease.

Others doubt that the im-

mune systems of people in the

region differ from people in the

rest of the world in any sys-

tematic way. They suspect cul-

tural factors and, in some coun-

tries, government policies such

as tightly enforced quarantines

are playing the main role.

Whatever the case, doctors

agree that some explanation is

needed for why Japan, South

Korea, China, Vietnam, Taiwan,

Malaysia and Singapore all have

experienced at most a few

thousand new SARS-CoV-2 in-

fections a day, even during the

current surge. That compares

with tens of thousands of daily

cases in many European nations

and more than 150,000 new

cases on many days in the U.S.

Research in Western na-

tions shows some people’s im-

mune systems partly recognize

SARS-CoV-2, the new corona-

virus, even though they were

never exposed to it, appar-

ently because of previous in-

fections by coronaviruses that

cause the common cold. There

are hints these people do bet-

ter fending off Covid-19.

A study by scientists at the

Francis Crick Institute in Lon-

don and elsewhere in the U.K.

looked at blood samples col-

lected before the Covid-19 pan-

demic. The study, published in

the journal Science, found that

about one in 20 adults sam-

pled had antibodies that rec-

ognized SARS-CoV-2, and that

nearly half of children and ad-

olescents had such antibodies.

Boston University scientists

found that patients whose

medical records showed con-

firmed exposure to common-

cold viruses had better out-

comes when they caught

SARS-CoV-2. Among hospital-

ized patients, the risk of dying

fell by some 70%, according to

their study in the Journal of

Clinical Investigation.

However, researchers haven’t

compared populations across

regions. Figuring out regional

variation in Covid-19 immunity

could come in handy in the next

pandemic, Alireza Bolourian

and Zahra Mojtahedi wrote in a

commentary in Archives of

Medical Research. If people in

China had some pre-existing re-

sistance to SARS-CoV-2, they

said, initial data from that

country could have led the

West to underestimate how

easily the virus could spread

outside of East Asia. In the fu-

ture, they wrote, disease model-

ers might have to “scale up the

severity of flulike epidemics.”

BYPETERLANDERS

ANDMIHOINADA

Scientists

Investigate

Earlier

Exposure

In Asia

showed there was “no sign” of

herd immunity in the country.

Meanwhile, Sweden’s lais-

sez-faire pandemic strategy

has failed to deliver the eco-

nomic benefits its proponents

had predicted. In the first half

of the year, Sweden’s gross do-

mestic product fell 8.5% and

unemployment is projected to

rise to nearly 10% in the be-

ginning of 2021, according to

the central bank and several

economic institutes.

Fear of the virus and the

government’s advice to avoid

social interactions have

weighed on domestic demand,

damaging business and inves-

tor confidence, said Lars Calm-

fors, an economist and member

of the Royal Swedish Academy

of Sciences. “Countries that

had mandatory restrictions

have done better than us.”

Sweden’s Covid-19 experi-
ment is over.
After a late autumn surge in
infections led to rising hospi-
talizations and deaths, the
government has abandoned its
attempt—unique among West-
ern nations—to combat the
pandemic through voluntary
measures.
Like other Europeans, Swedes
are heading into the winter fac-
ing restrictions ranging from a
ban on large gatherings to curbs
on alcohol sales and school clo-
sures—all aimed at preventing
the country’s health system
from being swamped by patients
and capping what is already
among the highest per capita
death tolls in the world.
The clampdown, which
started last month, put an end
to a hands-off approach that
had made the Scandinavian
nation a prime example in the
often heated global debate be-
tween opponents and champi-
ons of pandemic lockdowns.
Admirers of the Swedish
way as far as the U.S. hailed
its benefit to the economy and
its respect for fundamental
freedoms. Critics called it a
gamble with human lives. With
its shift in strategy, the gov-
ernment is now siding with
those advocating at least some
mandatory restrictions.
When the pathogen swept
across Europe in March, Swe-
den broke with much of the
continent and opted not to im-
pose mask-wearing and left
known avenues of viral trans-
mission such as bars and night-
clubs open. As late as last
month, Swedes enjoyed mass
sporting and cultural events
and health-care officials insisted
that the voluntary measures
were enough to spare the coun-
try the resurgence in infections
that was sweeping Europe.
Weeks later, with total
Covid-19-related deaths reach-
ing nearly 700 per million in-
habitants, infections growing
exponentially and hospital

BYBOJANPANCEVSKI

Holdout Sweden Ends Its Covid-19 Experiment

Health-care workers attended to a patient in intensive care at Östra Hospital in Gothenburg, Sweden, last month.

BJÖRN LARSSON ROSVALL/TT NEWS AGENCY/ZUMA PRESS

FROM PAGE ONE

she said. “You can see the

light at the end of the tunnel.”

Metal sales are also recov-

ering in the U.S. and Europe,

boosted by purchases of goods

such as bikes and air condi-

tioners.

The trading business

perked up in the fall and has

bloomed since the first half of

November, said Matteo

Chareun, who buys and sells

steel ingredients for Switzer-

land-based Euromet SA.

“We’re beginning to receive

many inquiries for January.”

Tens of millions of dollars

have flowed into exchange-

traded funds that track copper

producers like the Global X

Copper Miners ETF in recent

weeks, according to FactSet.

Meanwhile, hedge funds and

other speculative investors re-

cently pushed net bets on ris-

ing copper prices to their high-

est level since early in 2018,

Commodity Futures Trading

Commission data show.

Another reason some inves-

tors expect further gains

ahead: supply disruptions.

Mines in producing nations

like Peru shut for part of the

year because of the pandemic

and labor strikes. And a lack

of investment in new mining

projects since metals prices

slumped in 2014 and 2015

could contribute to a shortfall

of material, some analysts say.

Hopes for

Recovery

Fuel Metals

Sources: FactSet (iron ore, copper, stocks); CQG (aluminum)

*CFR China iron-ore futures with 62% iron content

†Comex copper futures

**Aluminum for delivery in three months on the London Metal Exchange

Performance this year

Ironore*

Copper†

Aluminum**

Metal futures

40

• 
  


• 
  

0

10

20

30

%

Jan. Dec.

Freeport-

McMoRan

Century

Aluminum

Southern

Copper

Metals producers’ shares

100

• 
  


• 
  

0

25

50

75

%

Jan. Dec.