Morning Report 1 Dec 21: Omicron and Powell comments send stocks lower

US sharemarkets fell on Tuesday. Fed Chair Powell discussed an earlier wrap-up of bond buying. And the head of Moderna said that vaccines were unlikely to be as effective against Omicron as they are against Delta. Shares in Moderna fell by 4.4%. At the close of trade the Dow Jones index was down by 652 points or 1.9%. The S&P 500 index lost 1.9%. The Nasdaq index fell 245 points or 1.6%. European sharemarkets fell on Tuesday,  travel & leisure shares fell 2.8% on worries about the efficacy of existing vaccines against the Omicron variant. But material stocks rose by 0.1%. The pan-European STOXX 600 index fell by 0.9%. The German Dax index by 1.2%. And the UK FTSE index lost 0.7%. In London trade, shares in Rio Tinto fell 0.2%; BHP shares rose 2.4%.

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