ETFs to Ride the Wave of 3 Key Coronavirus-Led Trends in 2H20

ETFs to Ride the Wave of 3 Key Coronavirus-Led Trends in 2H20

Sweta Jaiswal, FRM
5 min read

The year 2020 is seeing some new investment areas that became the hottest trends, thanks to the coronavirus outbreak. These trends are largely the by-products of quarantine measures and efforts to minimize the human-to-human contact, which are absolutely necessary to control the pandemic. Notably, new coronavirus cases hit another record high at 50,023 on Jul 1 with around 23 states halting the reopening process in the United States (per a CNN report). In such a scenario, it seems like these trends are here to stay in the second half of 2020 as the fear of a second wave peaking in the weeks ahead looms large.

Strikingly, even as the rebooting of U.S. economy happens in phases and social-distancing restrictions are being eased, people increasingly opting for contactless operations. It’s largely because the pandemic brought about some changes in lifestyle and influenced Americans’ preferences.

Let’s take a look at the trends that are expected to dominate the second half of 2020:

Work-From-Home Trend

In the current environment, people will try to maintain safe distancing and work remotely. Large employers like Twitter (TWTR) and Facebook (FB) allowed their employees to work from home. Moreover, Global Workplace Analytics president Kate Lister’s take on the current situation emphasizes the growing preference for working from home. In this regard, she said that “seventy-seven percent of the workforce say they want to continue to work from home, at least weekly, when the pandemic is over. Twenty-five to thirty percent of the workforce will be working-from-home multiple days a week by the end of 2021.”

Evidently, cloud computing emerged as a key technology in the fight against coronavirus. It is supporting organizations in remotely processing a lot of information, developing and running key applications and services and helping employees across the world collaborate while working. The work-from-home model already bumped up sales of PCs, laptops and other kind of computer peripherals.

Further, the semiconductor industry received a boost amid coronavirus crisis as it saw solid demand for memory chips and other semiconductor products. Notably, stay-at-home and physical-distancing mandates are spurring demand for data center and gaming.

Against this backdrop, investors can look at the following ETFs that can gain from the remote-working trend. These are First Trust Cloud Computing ETF SKYY, Global X Cloud Computing ETF CLOU, iShares PHLX Semiconductor ETF SOXX, VanEck Vectors Semiconductor ETF (SMH) and First Trust NASDAQ Semiconductor ETF (FTXL) (read: Second Wave of Coronavirus Hits: ETF Areas to Win/Lose).

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