Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Wednesday, December 1st.

Then this is your FT News Briefing.

The new Omicron variant and a more hawkish sounding fed chair spooked investors yesterday

and the world's biggest clothing retailer has new leadership.

Plus the recent stock market turbulence has market watchers talking about fragility.

When the calm breaks, it breaks with more ferocity than it would have been a few years ago.

We'll talk with Robin Wigglesworth about the recent market swings and whether there's

cause for concern. A Mark Filipino and here's the news you need to start your day.

US stock markets were rattled yesterday by fears over the Omicron coronavirus variant

and comments from Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell. The S&P 500 finished the day almost 2%

lower. Brent crude oil prices slipped nearly 4%. Powell was speaking to US lawmakers and

signaled his support for a quicker tapering of the Fed's pandemic bond buying scheme.

He cited the increased risk of higher inflation. But the FT US economics editor Colby Smith says the

Fed has to balance competing forces. So with this new variant, what that could mean is more intense

supply chain disruptions, more intense bottlenecks as well and all of those factors are going

to contribute perhaps to higher prices. But at the same time, if fears of catching COVID are keeping

people from reentering the workforce again, that could also mean that on the labor market front,

the recovery is even patchier than it has been over the past couple months. So it's a really,

really difficult position that the Fed is in at the moment. But they have a dual mandate,

meaning price stability and full employment. So if inflation does genuinely get out of control,

I don't think the Fed would hesitate to tame it. Colby Smith is the FT US economics editor.

So this market turbulence started last Friday. It was triggered by concerns about the Omicron variant.

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