The emergence of the Omicron COVID variant alongside a more hawkish pivot from the US Fed has raised uncertainty levels a notch as investors head toward year-end.

Australian travel stocks have been beaten up over the past month over concerns around the pace of reopening and rising energy prices. The emergence of COVID variant Omicron as a potential threat to the travel recovery over the past week has taken the retreat in travel stocks to around 20% since mid-October. At this stage, it’s difficult to be too definitive around the ultimate impacts of Omicron on economies and economic reopening until more data is available - likely mid-December. As a result, travel-related stocks will remain price sensitive to news flow surrounding the Omicron threat. Against this backdrop we share our positive thesis for QANTAS.

With a surge in case numbers in Europe signaling the start of a potential 4th COVID wave and cases on the rise in the US we assess the economic and market impact, and assess how Australia is likely to comparatively fare.

We delve into the case for holding gold equities in inflationary-driven risk-off periods.

In periods where an acceleration in inflation drives the risk-off event - like the 1970/80s - physical gold proves to have even stronger diversification benefits vs equities. Better still, gold equities significantly outpace the physical gold price proving to be true portfolio diversifiers during periods of high inflation.

At present, we believe gold holds a degree of appeal in a portfolio context as cash and fixed interest offer very low yields. We outline the rationale for an allocation to gold allocation given the prevailing backdrop of very low interest rates, elevated equity markets and asymmetric inflation risk.

Across three decades the market has valued Commonwealth Bank (CBA) at a premium relative to its three peers. Whether we look at earnings, dividends or book measures of valuation, CBA has consistently traded at a 15-20% premium since the 1990s. Currently 2-3x higher than the past 20 years, we outline why we believe CBA’s premium has peaked.

While there has been an understandable focus on the outlook for inflation and interest rates in recent months, earnings are a key blank in the global equity outlook. We examine the latest batch of earnings results in the US and Europe and the outlook for 2022.

The Wilsons Australian Equity Focus List has been updated following a number of earnings announcements and company updates in the past month. A rollover in earnings momentum has continued for the S&P/ASX 200. Some of this is a function of falling iron ore prices and domestic lockdowns, but several stock-specific situations have seen earnings slip from FY22E and into FY23E. We see the key implication for investors being the need to be more selective around portfolio positioning.