European and Asian stocks, along with U.S. equity futures, fell on Tuesday after Moderna Inc. executives confirmed that the omicron coronavirus variant could evade existing vaccines. Research is still underway to determine if the new strain is as virulent as its predecessors, while developers including Moderna, Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE are working on potentially updated versions of their shots.
Omicron won’t derail the rally for global stocks, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co. strategists, adding another voice to the tone of cautious optimism in the market after the recent sharp pullback.
“Sporadic setbacks,” such as the emergence of omicron should be viewed “in the context of higher natural and vaccine-acquired immunity, significantly lower mortality, and new antiviral treatments,” strategists led by Dubravko Lakos-Bujas and Mislav Matejka wrote in a note. “We expect post-Covid normalization to continue to assert itself globally in 2022,” they said.
