Black Friday turns red as markets get spooked by Omicron

AJ Bell Money & Markets

This week’s Money & Markets podcast is almost all about Omicron – the covid variant that’s put quite a fear up global markets, especially on last week’s ‘Red Friday’. Danni Hewson, Dan Coatsworth and Tom Sieber discuss how concerns about the new strain sparked a massive sell off, and the aftershocks which have kept on coming.

Unsurprisingly, airlines and travel companies were among the biggest fallers, and there’s been massive volatility in the oil price too, as investors weigh up how demand might be affected over the next few months. We also look at what’s going on with vaccine makers as they suss out exactly how efficacious their drugs will be against this new variant.

Plus, all the drama surrounding BT which looks to be in the middle of a takeover battle, and some big news from big tech – Twitter has a new boss and Facebook’s parent company Meta has been ordered to sell off the newly acquired Giphy by the UK’s competitions regulator.

And with inflation expected to keep rising next year, some investors are starting to wonder if they really need to take the risk of being in the market to get an income. To discuss this, and to get the latest on dividends from the stock market, Dan talks to James Harries who manages the Troy Global Income Fund.