General Motors, OPEC Meeting, Beige Book: 3 Things to Watch By Investing.com – Investing.com

General Motors, OPEC Meeting, Beige Book: 3 Things to Watch By Investing.com – Investing.com

© Reuters

By Sam Boughedda

Investing.com -- Stocks got off to a flying start on Wednesday but turned sharply negative late in the session after U.S. public health officials announced they had found the first confirmed case of the Covid-19 Omicron variant.

The case, found in California, was described as mild but symptomatic. The person is fully vaccinated and said to be isolating and improving. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the person had recently returned to the U.S. from South Africa.

U.S. health officials stressed that there was still a need to wait for further data to determine how transmissible and how effective the new strain is at evading current vaccines.     

On the jobs front, private payrolls rose 534,000 in November, according to ADP. That was less than October but more than expected. The report comes just a couple of days before the much anticipated government jobs report on Friday. 

In his second day of testimony on Capitol Hill, Fed Chair Jerome Powell repeated what he said Tuesday: Speeding up the taper of bond purchases would be on the central bank’s agenda at the December meeting, but he added that there was no reason for faster