Friday Flashback

THE WEEKLY WRAP: The S&P 500 and Dow Jones ended last week on a positive note, recording their seventh straight week with gains.

The Aussie market took heart from this and began our working week in fine fettle to open up with a smile, although the resources sector let Team Australia down again to be the weakest link after further falls in commodity prices.

Banking stocks led the way with investors happy with former Commonwealth Bank boss David Murray’s final report into the financial system.

The bad news for the day came from the Aussie dollar, which nose-dived to fresh four year lows on the back of better than expected United States jobs data and disappointing Chinese trade figures.

Tuesday sounded more like a Coles commercial with Status Quo singing ‘Down, Down, Deeper and Down’, across all sectors.

The fall in the oil price continued to give energy stocks a tough time.

Sponsoring Queensland police cars didn’t stop oil giant Santos (ASX: STO) shares dropping 60 cents to $7.70, while Woodside Petroleum (ASX: WPL) lost $1.01 to $34.38, and Oil Search (ASX: OSH) lost 56 cents to $7.29.

The iron ore price kept its recent form resulting in falls to BHP Billiton (ASX: BHP) losing $1.22 to $28.88, Rio Tinto (ASX: RIO) dropping $1.63 to $55.50, and Fortescue Metals (ASX: FMG) casting off 11 cents to $2.55.

Medibank Private (ASX: MPL) gained 3 cents to close at $2.22, which probably had nothing to do with the Abbott Government deciding to drop its $7 co-payment budget proposal straight onto the hunched shoulder of the nation’s clinician community by hurriedly converting it to a $5 charge for non-concessional patients at the discretion of GPs.

Waking on Wednesday we learnt the Greek market had crumbled like fetta cheese after the country’s government announced an early election.

One can only imagine what the reaction to the local market would be if Tony Abbott took a sudden short drive to Yarralulma.

Nevertheless the local market was a bit skittish on the news and a fall in consumer sentiment in the lead up to Christmas isn’t helping anybody either.

Any mention of Greece tends to shake up local bank stocks and they performed accordingly with Westpac (ASX: WBC) down 54 cents to $32.52, ANZ (ASX: ANZ) dropping 39 cents to $31.49, National Australia Bank (ASX: NAB) lost 30 cents to $32.30.

The only one to go the other way was the Commonwealth Bank (ASX: CBA), which deposited 33 cents to close at $82.35.

The slippery environment appeared to be good for gold miners, which did well following a rally in gold prices.

Newcrest Mining (ASX: NCM) was up 21 cents to $10.49 and Northern Star Resources (ASX: NST) was nine cents shinier at $1.26.

The local market opened yesterday morning and was immediately dragged down by oil stocks suffering under five year low prices.

The day didn’t get any better from there with resources stocks joining the fray as most commodity prices also went down.

BC Iron (ASX: BCI) became the latest iron ore producer to cull its workforce by announcing it will cut staff at its Nullagine mine in Western Australia and head office as it reduces costs.