european stocks skidded on tuesday on nervousness around the new omicron variant of coronavirus the stoxx europe 600 sxxp fell 14 to 46073 after the chief executive of vaccine maker moderna mrna was quoted as saying existing vaccines would be much less effective against the new variant stephane bancel told the financial times that it would be months before new vaccines against the variant would be available at scale the news hit every sector with oil and gas sxep and the travel and leisure sxtp sectors seeing the greatest pain of the major regional indexes the german dax dax skidded 15 the french cac 40 px1 slumped 15 and the uk ftse 100 ukx slumped 14 futures on the dow jones industrial average ym00 lost more than 500 points “the prospect of new restrictions before christmas puts a lot of pressure on energy and travel  leisure stocks who are among today’s worst performers” said pierre veyret technical analyst at activtrades markets will be focusing on fed chair jerome powell’s comments before a hearing on tuesday “this new variant is putting central banks in a difficult situation as they will now be torn between taking hawkish measures to tackle rising inflation and keeping the extremely dovish policies in place in order to sustain growth with the economic recovery now threatened by this strain” said veyret inditex itx shares slumped 5 after the resignation of its executive chairman pablo isla alvazez he’ll be replaced by marta ortega perez the daughter of the company’s founder as oscar garcia maceiras its general counsel taking over as chief executive from carlos crespo gonzalez