Market report: Biotechs flat amid strong market

The Australian stock market finished the week up today for the third week in a row, buoyed by a strong lead from Wall Street overnight which helped to fuel investor’s appetites for local banking and mining stocks.

A number of better-than-expected corporate results in the US was the trigger, which also helped to boost confidence in Asia with key markets in the region all up today. Investors also took some comfort from reports that the contagion from the banking crisis was being contained in Europe, however, problems with banks in Spain stole some of the gloss.

Locally the benchmark S&P/ASX200 index ended up 83.7 points, or 1.9 per cent, at 4,458.4 points, while the broader All Ordinaries index gained 80.3 points, or 1.8 per cent, to 4,475.1 points.

The S&P ASX/ 200 Health Care index added 120.9 points to close at 8154.9 points today, although this was only 43.8 points up for the week.

All up there were no announcements of any earth-shattering significance, although the recommendation from the board of Healthscope to accept a takeover offer from Texan consortium TPG and Carlyle was certainly a positive for the sector.

A two per cent rise for blood products giant CSL helped to keep the index in positive territory, while the other majors ResMed and Cochlear were also up 1.74 and 0.74 percent respectively.

Winner of the day today was bioimpedance specialist ImpediMed which surged 13 percent to close at $0.74. Cancer biotech Prima BioMed ended the day up five percent to $0.15 on heavy volumes of nearly four million. Anti-infective drug developer Biota Holdings managed a slight gain of 1.6 percent to $0.96.

Loser of the day was leukaemia drug developer ChemGenex, which lost 4.19 percent to close at $0.345.