Couple of potential upsides in the next two weeks:
- Most European countries have finally enacted serious containment measures, and the outbreak might start peaking - for example in Italy.
- The first Covid-19 vaccine tests are now underway. Approval of new vaccines is much faster than that of new medicines.
- There's clearly "peak fear" from the unknown - and as time passes the unknown shrinks. Eventually greed will dominate.
- China is rebounding, this might show up in economic data in a couple of weeks.
- Interest rate environment is very accommodative now - once the fear lessens people will refinance mortgages and will do deferred purchases.
- There's the curious case of Germany with thousands of infected but only 0.25% mortality rate and less than 10 ICU patients. Milder strain? Better testing? Better procedures?
- Also, financial markets are fundamentally forward looking, and they bottom out not when the worst of the crisis is reached, but when the stream of "surprise news" stops, which is often earlier than the economic bottom. The 2008-2009 market bottomed when Obama decided not to nationalize the big banks - which was months before the bottom of the recession.
There's obviously also various downsides, for example the U.S. healthcare system might start collapsing in major metro areas if social distancing fails, and the recession might be deeper and longer than expected.
But your "the glass is always half empty" world view is not particularly useful to pick bottoms - you'd be still short well into the recovery.
