Jan 4 - Welcome to the home for real-time coverage of markets brought to you by Reuters reporters. You can share your thoughts with us at markets.research@thomsonreuters.com LONDON TAKES OFF WITH TRAVEL AND LEISURE (0832 GMT) Britain"s travel and leisure stocks are shining this morning and are the uncontested leaders of the pan-European STOXX 600. BA owner IAG, Ryanair, Wizz Air and TUI are up roughly between 6% and 8.5% and pulling the sector up to a 2.7% rise in early trading. There"s definitely some optimism in the air that Omicron will not pose a long term threat to the economic recovery. London, which was closed yesterday for a bank holiday was catching up with the overnight rally and the FTSE 100 up 1.1%, at roughly twice the speed of the STOXX 600" 0.5% gain. The optimism for the new year is well spread across sectors. Energy, miners, banks, automotives and retail were all rising over 1%. Here"s how the Travel and Leisure sector is doing this morning: travel and leisure travel and leisure (Julien Ponthus with Tommy Lund) ***** PARTY LIKE IT"S 2022 (0756 GMT) While many New Year Eve celebrations across the world were scaled down or cancelled due to the surge of the Omicron coronavirus variant, financial markets had a party of their own on the first day of trading of 2022. A new record high was set on Monday for the pan-European STOXX 600 and on Wall Street, the S&P 500 (.SPX) and the Dow Jones (.DJI) closed at historic peaks. The euphoria surrounding stocks was best captured by Apple (AAPL.O) hitting $3 trillion of market capitalization, which is well above the combined value, for instance, of all the blue chips listed on London"s FTSE 100 (.FTSE). U.S. Treasury yields also surged as the optimism for the economic recovery had some investors bracing for earlier-than-expected interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve. Yields on U.S. 2-year notes, sensitive to rate hike expectations, soared to their highest since March 2020, when the pandemic triggered market turmoil. read more Other asset classes also enjoyed the risk-on mood such as oil, which rose on hopes of further demand despite OPEC+ looking set to agree to another output increase. read more Simply put, there"s a bullish consensus that the unprecedented wave of COVID-19 infections won"t derail the global recovery and that vaccines will prevent the need for stringent lockdowns. Of course, this narrative can be seen as a leap of faith on the supposed milder nature of Omicron and that other factors at play, such as inflation, a policy mistake or politics don"t suddenly rock the boat. In the meantime, Asian stocks were upbeat on Tuesday and European and U.S. stock futures point to another session of gains. China Evergrande"s shares jumped as much as 10% in resumed trade after the developer said a government order to demolish 39 buildings on the resort island of Hainan would not affect the rest of its project there. read more And data showing China"s factory activity growing at its fastest pace in six months in December and German sales unexpectedly rising in November could fuel further optimism. Key developments that should provide more direction to markets on Tuesday: --German retail sales rebound in November read more --Switzerland, France CPI data --UK mortgage data --Oil prices edge higher ahead of OPEC+ output policy meeting read more Apple"s soaring stock market value Apple"s soaring stock market value (Julien Ponthus) ***** LONDON READY TO CATCH UP (0747 GMT) The London stock market was off on a bank holiday yesterday and therefore missed the New Year party across global markets. It seems there"s been quite a lot of Fomo building up and that investors are ready to play catch-up. Futures for the FTSE 100 are currently up over 1%. Other European bourses are nonetheless expected to go for a second straight session of gains but with rises limited to about 0.5%. Same trend for U.S. futures which currently point out to another day or record highs on Wall Street.