Australian biotech market watch 19/06/09

By Staff Writers
Friday, 19 June, 2009

The All Ordinaries has had a turbulent week, shedding some of the gains made in the previous seven days, although Friday was mainly level, with the All Ords sitting at 3190 at 4:15pm on Friday.

Contrasting the flagging performance of the All Ordinaries, the health indices are up on Friday nearly 1.5% from last week.

CSL (ASX:CSL), the smallest of the six big vaccine makers worldwide, is pipped to have a swine flu vaccine first, and this optimism has resulted in some lifts in CSL's share price over the last few weeks. Today it's up 42c to $31.55.

Cochlear (ASX:COH) has gone through a few wobbles this week, finishing on $56.84, only a few cents off its start on Monday of $56.92.

Amongst the losers is Ansell (ASX:ANN), down 1.6% to $8.80, and Blackmores (ASX:BKL), dropping 4.7% after riding high on the threats from swine flu, which appear to be subsiding with the federal government reducing the alert level on Wednesday.

Novogen (ASX:NRT) has also slipped another 13% today to 62c, down a full 40% from its peak on May 19 of $1.02.

Ramsay Health Care has seen a slight slide over the last couple of days down to $11.07.