Friday’s news of the emerging Omicron variant triggered a wave of travel bans and discussion of lockdown procedures in a number of countries that led to the largest move in US 10y bond yields since March 2020 with yields -16bps in the shortened US Black Friday trading session along with a -12% move in Brent crude oil. Since Friday we have seen an increase in cases identified, with 13 in Netherlands from an arriving South Africa flight, Italy seeing their first case likely arriving two weeks ago, and in a variety of cities in Germany. In addition to flight bans which have been imposed on southern Africa by a number of countries, the UK will introduce mandatory face masks in shops and public transport from 4AM Tuesday and everyone entering the UK will required to take a PCR test within two days of arrival and must self-isolate until they have a negative result. With the WHO guiding they will need two weeks to ascertain if it is resistive to vaccines, we are likely due to a continued onslaught of reactionary headlines across geographies until more information is presented.