1. Wall Street undaunted by bad US job number

The US got a job shock with the numbers employed in August coming in at 235,000, which was much less than expected. Two hundred and thirty five thousand jobs doesn’t seem all that bad but the problem was that it was out by nearly, wait for it, half a million! Economists think the Delta strain is stopping Americans from wanting to work and go out. But the stock market saw the bright side of the bad number because it delays future interest rate rises.

2. Does business interruption insurance cover Covid?

An upcoming court case could deliver windfall payments to small businesses hurt by the Coronavirus and cost insurance companies billions. When the virus closed down businesses in 2020, insurers such as CGU and Allianz said their business interruption insurance didn’t cover pandemics. But now a Federal Court will look at nine small businesses and their insurance policies to see if they should be entitled to compensation. The decision will be good or bad for the share prices of insurance companies.

3. Tourism operators set to lose $6.9 billion!

September is historically a school holiday month but lockdowns will make it a $6.9 billion loser for the tourism operators out there. And if you do some counting, since December 2020, the grand total of losses add up to $21.3 billion! Number crunching by the Tourism and Transport Forum says these holidays usually see $7.7 billion worth of spending by holiday goers but this year it will only be $770 million. Closed borders and lockdowns will do that.

4. Tokyo 2020 Paralympics come to a close

Australian athletes will be taking home 21 gold, 29 silver and 30 bronze medals from the Paralympic Games in Tokyo which finished last night with the closing ceremony. China topped the medal tally with 96 gold medals, more than twice as many as Great Britain in second and the United States in third.

5. Nasdaq up over 1.5% for the week

The Nasdaq had the biggest gains of the three major indexes last week, rising 1.55% for the week to 15,363.52. On a weekly basis, the S&P 500 was up 0.58% to 4,535.43 while the Dow Jones fell 0.24% to 35,369.09.