Investors scrambling to quantify the impact of the coronavirus outbreak on China are turning to a string of unusual data points to measure disruption to the world’s second-largest economy, from food-delivery apps to the polluted air wafting over Hong Kong.
The humanitarian crisis has caused factories to be shuttered and cities to be closed off, and has prompted analysts to slash their first-quarter economic growth forecasts for both China and the rest of the world.
The crisis has also sparked a race among investors to gain an edge by finding esoteric sources of information that can be used to measure just how bad the economic pain in China is — and when the recovery is beginning.