“The key to building wealth is to preserve capital and wait patiently for the right opportunity to make the extraordinary gains.” — Victor Sperandeo

1. Early Lab Test Shows Omicron Weakening Vaccine Effectiveness — the Omicron variant of coronavirus can partially evade the protection afforded by vaccines, according to laboratory tests conducted in South Africa that give one of the first indications of vaccine effectiveness against the variant, but scientists say the shots should still defend those inoculated from severe disease. They found the vaccine generated one-fortieth of the infection-fighting antibodies against Omicron compared with its performance against the original version of the virus. That is a big reduction but doesn’t mean the variant can escape vaccines completely, said Alex Sigal, the virologist who led the study.
2. Pfizer Says Booster Neutralized Omicron but Variant May Elude Two Doses — Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech said that a third dose of their Covid-19 vaccine neutralized the Omicron variant in lab tests but that the two-dose regimen was significantly less effective at blocking the virus. A third dose increased antibodies 25-fold compared with two doses against the Omicron variant, the companies said. Still, two doses may prove effective in preventing severe illness from Covid-19, they said, because immune cells are able to recognize 80% of parts of the spike protein that the vaccine targets.
3. Turkey’s Economic Turmoil Sends Desperation and Inflation Soaring — the Turkish lira has lost as much as 45% of its value this year, making ordinary Turks poorer. The pandemic-era consumer-price increases that have plagued economies across the world are supersize in Turkey, where inflation stands at more than 21%. People here are rushing to trade their shrinking wages for dollars and gold, are eating out less and are having more trouble finding imported goods, including medicine. Mr. Erdogan has successfully pressured the central bank to slash interest rates despite rapid inflation. Normally, central banks raise rates to encourage saving, discourage borrowing and cool off inflation. But Mr. Erdogan has called for lower interest rates and blamed rising costs on foreign interests.
4. Evergrande Declared in Default as Huge Restructuring Looms — China Evergrande Group has officially been labeled a defaulter for the first time, the latest milestone in months-long financial drama that’s likely to culminate in a massive restructuring of the world’s most indebted developer. The downgrade came just minutes after Fitch applied the same default label to Kaisa Group Holdings Ltd., which failed to repay a $400 million dollar bond that matured Tuesday. Together, the two companies account for about 15% of outstanding dollar bonds sold by Chinese developers. Long considered by many investors as too big to fail, Evergrande has now become the largest casualty of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s campaign to tame the country’s overindebted conglomerates and overheated property market. Before this week, Chinese borrowers had defaulted on $10.2 billion of offshore bonds in 2021, with real estate firms making up 36% of the total, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

The week ahead — Economic data from Econoday.com: