Friday Flashback

THE WEEKLY WRAP: the market gave nobody anything to celebrate last Friday closing 10 points down to record its worth weekly performance for more than a year.

As bad as that was, the week ended a lot worse for our PM, Tony Abbott with a report from the United Nations Environment Program listing Australia as one of four countries not on course to meet their emissions reduction promises.

According to the report Australia, Canada, Mexico, and the United States all need to stand in front of a big mirror and take a good hard look at themselves in the carbon heavy lifting department if they were to meet their respective emissions targets by 2020.

Abbot’s call of coal being ‘good for humanity’ was also taken to task by Andrew Steer, president of US development research organisation World Resources Institute, who said Australia was wrong to view fossil fuels as the way to boost economic growth.

On Monday, China sneezed and everybody felt better with the People’s Bank of our brand new trading partner cutting interest rates for the first time in more than two years.

Even the brief drop of the iron ore price charting into sub-US$70 per tonne territory failed to hold back the happy wave of investor sentiment as all sectors enjoyed a buoyant day, except for the Telcos and the way my Vodafone connectivity behaves I’m happy for that particular status qui to remain for as long as possible.

Not all good news for everybody however, with the ABC cuts starting to kick in and redundancies to be handed out.

As try as it might, the Medibank private listing on Tuesday failed to resuscitate the market, which spent another day in the doldrums.

The much-anticipated health fund debut didn’t really set off any fireworks, coming on at $2.22 and easing back through the day to its first close at $2.14.

Although the iron ore price ended the day above the $US70 psychological barrier there is still real concern it will slip further.

BHP Billiton (ASX: BHP) was 80 cents short for the day at $32.10, Rio Tinto (ASX: RIO) lost 89 cents to $57.25, and Fortescue Metals dropped 17 cents to $2.81.

The Medibank bubble lost some air on Wednesday closing at $2.09 – below the $2.15 institutions paid.

Doubtful they’ll be too disappointed give they can now buy more at a discounted price, and in reality they’re probably the only buyers out there at the moment.

That didn’t stop the share market enjoying its best day since August with gains across the boards.

The iron ore price continued its slide to take up residence in the US$60 range marking a five-year low.

Yesterday the market just managed to keep its nose above water.

The iron ore price is now officially in free-fall as it hit another new five-year low close to $US68 a tonne.

This time the mining giants were unable to dodge the bullet with BHP Billiton losing 53 cents to $32.00 and Rio Tinto dropping 37 cents to $58.02.

Just to prove there is no exact science involved Fortescue Metals gained seven cents to close at $2.86.

Oil prices dropped to $US77.66 a barrel to hit energy stocks, but failed to register any impact at our local petrol station which jumped to $1.42 a litre from $1.28 just the night before – work that out!