If there is a simple lesson to be drawn from last week’s market rout, it is that there is fragility in complexity. The coronavirus outbreak has, like the 2011 Japanese tsunami and Thai floods that disrupted auto and electronics businesses, or the 1999 earthquake in Taiwan that brought the semiconductor industry to a halt, shown us the vulnerabilities of our highly interconnected economy and global supply chains.

This time around, the trigger is an outbreak spreading outwards from China, still the factory of the world as well as its second-largest economy. It comes at a time when US politics are in flux, and we are in the midst of what Ray Dalio, founder of the Bridgewater hedge fund, recently called a “paradigm shift” for both markets and economies. This is a new era in which few of the old rules will apply.

Goldman Sachs last week warned investors to expect zero profit growth from US companies this year, mainly because of the growing impact of the virus. But I wonder how much profit growth big corporations will be able to expect even after the infections play out and the results of the November US presidential elections come in.