Which brings an interesting question: how many of all the people you know who knew, yourself included, put their skin in the game and are now rich from the options they bought in January? If it is not many, I would argue it is better to say people suspected or feared, not that they knew.
I did, however, rebalance almost entirely out of stocks three weeks ago and while I am not "now rich", my portfolio is doing a hell of a lot better than most folks'.
I didn't even know that a "put" on the stock market was a thing until last week, and am not particularly interested in figuring out how to do that... But I did back out of buying a car because I thought I'd be better off to have the cash when this gets bad, and here we are now in this thread... Maybe next time (hopefully there isn't one) I'll figure out more of what a "put" actually is and how to get one
That being said, I did take what I felt was a risk at the time and shorted Royal Caribbean and Carnival Cruise lines which payed off, but I was not certain that at the time it would (if I was I would have risked a whole lot more), I went off a hunch once I started seeing them close the ports to cruise ships. I am now buying those stocks because I think their hit from CORVID-19 is priced in, but we will see. It's all a guessing game on good hunches. Hardly anybody saw it exploding (short of the doctors on the ground in Wuhan) and everyone was hoping that it was going to be contained in China just like SARS was.
The reality is, Doctors and the CDC do not make decisions on news reports they make them on papers and data from people on the ground. That data was actively being suppressed to some extent by China until it was too late. Sure there where rouge Chinese doctors in the media warning us (and they where right), but that is a thin straw to base policy on. Once the true data was out and the CDC could base guideline on it, it was already too late.
Also to note I am sorry and pray for those of you that are affected by this.
