News

November 29, 2008

That Was The Week That Was … In Australia

By Our Man in Oz

Minews. Good morning Australia. It looks like your market staged a strong recovery over the past week.

Oz. It does, though it depends on where you started counting. If restricted to last week only, then it was the boom returned with the key metals and mining index up an eye-catching 25.5 per cent. If looked at over the whole of November, it was simply a case of recovering lost ground, as prices effectively moved back to where they were at the end of October. If you continue that theme of one event cancelling out the other, it was the same at a corporate level with a very strong rise from BHP Billiton (BHP) on the index counteracting the heavy fall of Rio Tinto (RIO).

Minews. Well, if the numbers don’t provide a clear picture, then what was the mood like?

Oz. Better, but once again you would have to say that the flow of news was evenly balanced, with the negatives almost cancelling out the positives. The negative situations at OZ Minerals (OZL) and CopperCo (CUO) took a lot of people by surprise. OZ was in a trading halt on Friday night as it renegotiated some of its debt facilities. That sort of renegotiation tends to frighten the horses at times when...