Themes

• General mood is “risk off”
• U.S. markets back after Thanksgiving Holidays
• Little data slated, focus will be on Omnicron

What’s Moving

It was another quiet session today with the market backing up from last week’s U.S. Thanksgiving holidays, but there is a swag of incentives that have hit the market and the wires since the last time U.S. desks were fully staffed.

The big story is the new covid Omnicron variant. This strain has already shown itself to be highly contagious and has popped up in half a dozen countries already.

RBNZ Chief Economist Ha said that it is unlikely that this variant will prevent further New Zealand rate rises. The Japanese media is also reporting that Japan will close its borders to international travelers.

Data today saw slightly weaker than expected Japanese Retail Sales (+.9% from talk of +1.2%).

Thoughts

Data tonight sees:

• U.K. Mortgage Approvals (E: 71k)
• U.S. Pending Home Sales (E: +0.8%)

Its all going to come down to how the U.S. market reacts to this new information. There was some unwinding of safe haven trades which puts the Dollar at better levels if the safe haven buyers want to reemerge.

Equities are expected to have a tough night amid the weakness in European stocks on Friday.