Australian biotech market watch 05/06/09

It's been a strong week of trading, with the All Ordinaries buoyed by positive news on the Australian economy, a strong performance in overseas exchanges, a rising then flattening Aussie dollar and news of Rio Tinto and BHPs machinations towards a merger in Western Australia.

Overall, as of around 4pm, the All Ordinaries is up nearly 1%, which is a lift of 2% over the week, although profit taking has clipped some of the gains.

By contrast, the health indices dropped 2.5% today, shedding virtually all the gains of the past week.

Leading the drop is CSL (ASX:CSL), which shed $1.00 to $29.01. This comes after the appointment of the judge to hear the US antitrust case against CSL that might block CSL's US$3.1 billion takeover of plasma group, Talecris Biotherapeutics.

Ramsey Health Care (ASX:RHC) also shed 15c to $10.95, and ResMed (ASX:RMD) gave up 10c to $4.68 as it continues with its buy-back of up to 10 million common shares.

Sonic Healthcare (ASX:SHL), which some analysts consider a good defensive stock in this market, also dropped 50c to $11.30.

It wasn't all bad news though. Cochlear (ASX:COH) rose 0.4% to $57.94, and dental outfit, 1300 Smiles (ASX:ONT) rose 5.4% to $2.74.

Other stocks remained fairly static.