The Australian sharemarket when measured by the all ordinaries index is down 50% from the high we saw reached in Nov 2007.
Here I'll run through the losers, the relative losers and whether there have been any winners at all in this bear market.
With Babcock and Brown plummeting over the past year, it's not surprising that its satellite funds have also been punished. The two worst performers in the top 200 stocks on the Australian sharemarket have been Babcock and Brown Power followed by Babcock and Brown Infrastructure.
One thing that the loser group has in common is their high level of gearing. It's been a market that has not looked kindly on highly geared companies and this list is a reflection of that.
The first surprise is that there have been stocks performing well. One thing that the top three stocks have in common is their relationship to clean coal or/and coal seam gas assets and technology.
AGL Energy sold its stake in Origin Energy which was good news. So while the rest of the market is floundering it still looks like coal seam gas assets have performed pretty well.
Source: IRESS. Figures correct as of Nov 19 2008, 3.45pm.