COVID – 19 Update from AMT: At our weekly trade group Zoom meeting on 3/4/21, Dr. Stanley Zaborowski, who serves as our medical adviser, articulated the following new COVID developments which also have a bearing on investment managers:
-- Thirty-three million U.S. residents have now been vaccinated. This achievement will lead to new insights that are expected to aid our industry’s understanding of the pandemic. For instance, scientists can track whether and to what degree this group of 33 million is now capable of resisting any of the “variant” forms of coronavirus that are known to be in the U.S. We would then be able to project this data to our own industry in anticipation of the vaccination of hypothetical levels of buy-side professionals.
-- Regarding the CDC’s School Guidelines, we noted that teachers have been moved up on the vaccine scale to category 1B. This means we can expect that more teachers will likely be willing to agree to being in classrooms by the start of school in August & September of this year. Also, more protection from COVID for teachers will lead to opportunities to be creative with ideas for more elementary level students to be in their classrooms as 3 feet social distancing, for instance, could quite possibly be deemed adequate in some areas by school administrators and parents.
-- Working From Home Guidelines Will Quite Possibly Become More Creative, because public transportation will be safer as front line bus drivers and subway operators become vaccinated while social distancing remains in effect for riders. Thus, trading professionals could conceivably get to the office and work together but at a safe distance. Furthermore, certain professionals who rely largely upon utilizing technology for research, for example, might continue to work from home for a longer period of time.
The above concepts are actually the tip of the iceberg. Please CLICK HERE to view AMT’s 26 minute Zoom replay of our 3/4/21 meeting. Practices in the investment management industry are changing quickly as the Nation’s efforts to mitigate COVID -19 begin to take hold. We are not returning to the way things were in 2019. Rather, as we at AMT are beginning to observe, an entirely new era could emerge in the financial services sector – this would be most welcome by many industry members.
Be Safe,
Joe
Joe Sack, President, Asset Managers Tech
Mobile: 1-914-648-0088
