Laura Bessarati

a listener production.

And what pushed oil prices to their highest level since 2022?

Well, Stevie, an eighth straight session of declines.

That means it's been our longest losing streak since September 2018.

So you have to go back about seven and a half years to find a longer losing streak.

So if we get to nine days, I'm going to have to take some time to go back through every single day like I have been doing, maybe go back even more years to find out when the last longest losing streak was.

I'm glad we both did it separately.

All right, let's look at what's happened over the course of the month first, and then we'll look at what's happened today, because as you point out, it's been a turbulent month.

This is on the back of, of course, the very fluid situation between the US and Iran.

It's dragged on, of course, for another month, and the conflict has entered a ninth week.

Now, early in the month, as you said, the Aussie market was up closer to 6%.

We got within striking distance of a record high, but as you mentioned earlier,

Now, just ahead of the close today, it looks like we're going to end the month about 2% higher.

So we've still gained back some of the lost ground from March when we were down by close to 8%, but still have a long way to go.

There's been a lot going on, of course, between the US and Iran, but also a number of companies have declined.

downgraded guidance due to the impacts of the conflict.

And of course, yesterday, we saw inflation soar to 4.6% for the year to March.

That was driven by higher transport and petrol prices.

And it really just puts another rate hike on the table next Tuesday on May the 5th when the RBA meets next.

It certainly hasn't been, but it's been a fairly different story over in the United States.