The new COVID-19 variant will temporarily wobble financial markets, but concerns will be quickly shrugged off by them, I believe.

The prediction comes as a new COVID-19 strain discovered in southern Africa weighed on global markets on Thursday. Travel stocks, hospitality firms, and bank stocks were amongst the hardest hit.

The World Health Organization (WHO) will meet on Friday to analyze the new variant. The meeting will determine if the B.1.1.529 strain should be designated a variant of “interest” or of “concern.” The variant, which was identified on Tuesday, is said to carry an “extremely high number” of mutations.

On Friday, Asia Pacific markets were down around 2%, European stock futures predict a more than 2% drop at opening trades. Meanwhile, at one point, the Dow in the U.S. had plummeted by more than 1,000 points, tanking the index by more than 3%.

Experts are determining whether the new variant is more transmissible or more deadly than previous ones.

The fact that a new strain has been discovered and, critically, that at this stage we know little about it has caused jitters in the financial markets, which loathe uncertainty. The headlines have caused a knee-jerk reaction.

In addition, Wall Street was closed on Thanksgiving, meaning that a large bulk of global trades were missing, making other moves more pronounced.”This wobble is likely to be temporary with markets remaining bullish for the time being.

“Global shares have jumped 16% this year with investors focusing on the post-pandemic economic rebound. They largely shrugged off the Delta variant that caused a mini wave of market nerves in the summer.

It’s likely that markets will do the same with this new variant.

This is because, as Delta showed, mutations are now expected and we have more of a blueprint about how to deal with them.

Instead, global financial markets will be focusing on other pressing issues including high inflation caused by supply side bottle necks and the likelihood of a quicker pull away from ultra-loose monetary environment.

Markets will temporarily wobble on the uncertainty of this new COVID variant, but will remain bullish and largely focused on other issues.

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London-born Nigel Green is founder and CEO of deVere Group. Following in his father’s footstep, he entered the financial services industry as a young adult. After working in the sector for 15 years in London, he subsequently spent several years operating within the international space, before launching deVere in 2002 with a single office in Hong Kong. Today, deVere is one of the world’s largest independent financial advisory organizations, doing business in 100 countries and with more than $12bn under advisement. It specializes global financial solutions to international, local mass affluent, and high-net-worth clients. In early 2017, it was announced that deVere would launch its own private bank. In addition, deVere also confirmed it has received its own investment banking license.