The Omicron variant is reported to have spread to 16 US states, raising market participants' concerns and dimming risk appetite.
In an interview with CNN on Sunday (05/November) yesterday, Dr. Anthony Fauci revealed that the Omicron Variant has spread to a third of US states. Although the spread of Omicron is classified as aggressive, so far there have been no reports of a high severity of this COVID-19 variant.
According to Fauci, at least 16 US states reported cases of Omicron last week. The states in question are California, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Utah, Washington, and Wisconsin. Despite the growing number of Omicron COVID cases, the Delta variant still accounts for 99.9 percent of new cases in the US today.
Moderna through its Co-founder and CEO, Noubar Afeyan, said that it would take another 7-10 days to collect key data. Then, it will take an additional 2-3 months to develop the Omicron vaccine, although there are alternative options such as adding a booster dose of vaccine that is already available.
Commodity Dollar Struggles to Find Foothold
In trading at the beginning of the week (06/December), the commodity dollar attempted to recover after falling sharply last week. Although the uncertainty regarding the Omicron variant still looms and dims the outlook for risk appetite going forward, the AUD/USD pair is currently hovering around 0.70229, up 0.4 percent on a daily basis.
Similar conditions were also seen in the Canadian dollar which rose 0.1 percent against the greenback and is now trading at around 1.2822. Meanwhile, the NZD/USD pair is moving around 0.6757, trying to trim the sharp losses suffered over the last four weeks.
"Perhaps we should look for volatility rather than trend," an ANZ analyst said in a note. He added that the AUD and NZD volatility gauges have hit 8-month highs due to the recent sinking in their exchange rates.
Investors' attention will be on the US annual inflation data for November which will be released on Friday. According to Chris Weston of Pepperstone, a spike in inflation above 7 percent would "shake things up".
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