 Okay, very good morning to you. It's Friday 26th November and I'm going to get straight to it and talk about the new South African COVID-19 variant and that's very much so what's moving the markets in the overnight session. And weighing on sentiment this morning going into the European Open, just running you through a couple of different charts to give you an update of where we are at the moment. This sell-off here you can see in the Dow future is from the commencement of the Asia Pact session here in the Ellipse at the top to where we're trading now as I'm filming going into the European Open. So we've seen really a move of about a thousand points in the Dow future already. A lot of this price movement of course exacerbated by generally lower volumes, thanksgiving yesterday market closures in the US and shortened electronic sessions and PIP sessions today. But typically speaking US participants don't come back on the Friday and so that does play a part as well. It kind of exacerbates price reactions but certainly a very evident one that we're seeing develop on the back of this latest coronavirus developments. And you can pretty much mirror or map I should say overlay the oil price with the equity price. Obviously a renewed fear about COVID-19 with a new variant yet to be determined on its transmissibility. But if that were the case and obviously worst case scenario that people fear is that it's mutated enough that it renders current vaccine-led or just natural antibody immunization redundant and then obviously we go back to square one again and that will impede a lot of travel. That's already started to happen. The UK's issued temporary ban on flights from six African countries. Other countries are quite swiftly following suit as well at this point in time and so oil is just feeling quite the brunt of selling at the moment. I mean from a technical point of view as we continue to move lower here in crude 73-14 in the futures was an area of support and resistance going back through the September period. So there are some areas here that would be keeping an eye on any breakdown and through there though if this really starts to capitulate and become a bigger thing then certainly move down to 70 bucks technically is kind of next target beyond that point. It's kind of similar with the Dow actually if we put the Dow just briefly onto a daily chart where the market has just found a bit of a bottom and seeing a bit of a bounce at the moment. If you put it on a daily it kind of makes sense from a technical perspective you can see here this is looking at a multi-month picture but you can see back to the early and mid-October price points here the market just finding a bit of a flaw there on that initial kind of spillover in price. Otherwise, yield's declining so T-notes getting a decent bid as well in this risk-off trade. Dolly Yen quite sharply lower. Yen's strength on the classic kind of flight to quality move. Not forgetting as well is that the fixed income market is quite susceptible to a strong swing in price short term due to market positioning of being quite obsessed with inflation at the moment and obviously that's led to an acceleration in the Fed talking about tapering the market pricing in when the next Fed rate hikes are going to happen all these types of things and of course now this comes out into a market that has been moving generally in the opposite direction in the rate space so seeing a decent move there in T-notes and gold catching a strong bid as well this morning here in the top right just in step then with the as I said the general flight to quality safe haven bid across markets. A little bit more then on what's been going on so this new variant for South Africa is called the B11529 and scientists say that it carries a high number of mutations in its spike protein which plays a key role in the virus's entry into cells into the body and so just giving you a brief bit of background here scientists pay the most attention to mutations in the gene that encodes the virus's spike protein which plays that key role into entry into cells and that's what's targeted by the vaccines that are currently in play. Four variants of concern all carry multiple mutations affecting that spike protein and that raises questions about whether people who develop antibodies to the regular or what they call the wild type strain of coronavirus either from a vaccine or having recovered from COVID would be able to fight off then new variants that might emerge. In most instances the variants of concern do lead to a reduction in vaccine effectiveness but to quite a large varying degree and it appears to be affected by waning protection over time as we know those efficacy rates require then booster shots as what we're seeing in the UK and other places at least in the Western developed world and also can be more prevalent among the elder generations so 65 kind of years old plus. In terms of where this has come from like this exact one that we're talking about this morning that's really grabbing the attention. A scientist from the UCL Genetics Institute in London this morning has said it's likely to have evolved during a chronic infection in an immune compromised person someone with already an underlying condition and possibly untreated HIV or AIDS and the reason for that is that South Africa has 8.2 million people infected with HIV which is the most in the world and some speculate that that was the origin of the original South African beta variant as well because of that immune compromised individual for those reasons. The spread I mean what's the current status the current amount is there's almost 100 cases detected in South Africa what we've just had now come out from the World Health Organization they're going to have an emergency meeting they're going to convene with their experts at 11 o'clock London time this morning to assess the new COVID-19 variant and at this point in time they do not comment on nations imposing travel restrictions on South African areas and so yeah what we've seen here is the UK taking perhaps slightly more prompt action that they might have been criticised for doing so before but this comes as well as while there's been the latest quite aggressive uptick we're seeing in mainland Europe and all of these nations now being more educated I guess about having set protocols now how to deal with these things taking much more abrasive action when this type of news tends to hit so when the who meet they'll decide if the variant should be designated as one of interest one would think that a large portion of that has already been factored into market prices this morning but certainly that kind of rubber stamps it if you like in that way and then it will receive a name kind of like the others beta gamma alpha so on and so forth so yeah what kind of things I'll be looking at from a market perspective really to ascertain direction from here is the degree of which now countries start to go into travel restrictions that's obviously going to be things like oil price the perception as well about economic activity this does obviously bring about long term more concerns over the inflation and bottlenecks and things like that but in the short term I think it's more reactionary effect certainly now this morning the reasons why the market movement is quite violent is because of even though you and I on these briefings have been talking about these case rates in a while you throw in the hand grenade which is now a different variant which yet to be determined but has the risk of mutation which then can be very problematic requiring then more onerous restrictions put in place and then that will sharply impede economic activity at a point in time where markets have really been pricing in fed hikes acceleration of taper all these different types of things so yeah that that is the latest I mean nothing else really for me to update you on really wanted to just cover that main story and so yeah that's the latest I'll keep you updated informed probably via my Twitter account for throughout the rest of the day but don't forget as well I'll probably touch upon this a little bit more in the market maker podcast I'll be talking to peers later for our usual end of week chin where we'll talk about all things markets and certainly this will be on the agenda and so if you want to a bit more of a deep dive into what our thoughts are on this matter just search for amplify me market maker on Spotify Apple and so on all right take care guys have a fantastic weekend