1. Oil wide open!

Taxpayers will fund Australia’s two remaining oil refineries just to stay open. The decision will be announced today by the Prime Minister at Ampol’s Lytton refinery in Brisbane saving 1,250 jobs. More importantly, it doesn’t leave the country 100% dependent on imported petrol.What’s the cost? The AFR says $2 billion as a subsidy to the refiners and $302 million for upgrades to the facilities.

2. Work from home push

The pressure to let workers work from home is building as bosses are calling for an end to home-working in the suburbs.The latest survey has found workers at home instead of the CBD office are actually more productive but the Closer to Home report was funded by the Business Western Sydney group that says Sydney’s western suburbs economy would enjoy a $450 million boost if workers can do their job from home. Nice work if you can get it.

3. Budget doesn’t give Libs a boost

It’s one of the best-received Budget in modern times but Newspoll says it hasn’t given the Morrison Government an electoral bounce.Only 15% of voters saw last week’s Budget as bad for them, which compares to the well-received Peter Costello last Budget, before the Howard Government lost the next election. Newspoll says Labor retains its two-party preferred 51 to 49 seats lead. That said, ScoMo leads Anthony Albanese as preferred PM 55-38%.

4. Expect stocks to rise today!

Tech stocks were dumped last week taking the stock market down, and you can blame Wall Street worrying about inflation but concerns are waning. Just in case the inflation news and tech stock sell off spooked you last week, US stocks were up on Friday led by, wait for it, tech stocks! The Nasdaq was up about 2.3% for the trading day but was down about 2.3% for the week. A weaker consumer confidence number killed the fears about inflation and you can expect stocks to rise here today.

5. Indexes down for the week

Like the Nasdaq, the Dow Jones and S&P 500 were also down for the week with falls of 1.14% and 1.39%, respectively. The S&P/ASX 200 performed slightly better with a drop of 0.94% from a week earlier. Among the worst performers locally were Perenti Global, which fell 28.64%, and A2 Milk, which was down 21.23%.