2020 has become a year many of us would want to forget and move on. Moving into 2021, we can look back and examine the financial and health impact of COVID-19 in the United States. One could say, hindsight is 2020.
Various retailers were affected by COVID-19 in both positive and negative ways. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos primarily benefited financially from the pandemic, raising his already extraordinarily high net even higher by $931 billion. Given Amazon’s position as an online retailer, most would assume they would have an easier time adjusting to the demands of a pandemic market. The pandemic pushed more people to rely on Amazon for its services while brick and mortar stores such as Target needed a more drastic shift in serving their customers. We compare these two retail giants' stocks with the COVID-19 death increase to see if there are any trends worth examining. We also attempt to explain these trends by using New York Times API.
The beginning of the pandemic outbreak resulted in a lot of uncertainty around the housing market. The uncertainty translated into volatility. Could there be a noticeable trend between death increase and houses sold? Are people taking advantage of low-interest rates to purchase a home? We gathered housing data from both Zillow and Redfin to see the correlation between housing data and COVID-19 data.