That's it from us, thanks for sticking with us today.

The ASX200 closed today on 7,194 points, up 21.6 points (0.3%).

But the graph below shows what happened to the index for the week. 

Across Monday to Friday, it gained 1.72% in value, up 121.7 points overall this week. 

Yeah can see how it lost some ground on Tuesday when the RBA Board kept interest rates on hold, but then it jumped on Wednesday after some very weak ABS data showed households are really struggling. That data really shifted the tone of the debate, and saw more economists saying the RBA was probably done lifting interest rates.

Anyway, see you all next week. Have a good weekend. Take care of yourselves, and each other.

On the list of top and bottom movers, Santos was registered as the second-best performer, but since the "best" performer is a penny stock, Santos is the top performer of substance.

It gained 6.15 per cent today, up 42 cents to $7.25 a share.

And as the last of the trades settle, let's take a look at how the sectors performed.

The energy sector was the strongest performer today, gaining nearly 1% in value. 

It was followed by basic materials, healthcare, consumer cyclicals, real estate, and financial stocks.

4pm - trading has closed for the day (and week)

Speaking at a Sydney University banking conference today, the RBA's head of financial stability Andrea Brischetto said the bank's internal research showed most borrowers can still afford their mortgage at current interest rates.

Ms Brischetto said less than 2 per cent of mortgage borrowers are spending more than they earn and have less than six months of savings to cover that shortfall.

But the vast majority of the households were managing.

She said even a sharp rise in unemployment would not drastically alter those numbers.

"Even if the unemployment rate were to increase by 2 percentage points (around three to four times as sharply as projected in the November 2023 Statement on Monetary Policy), the share of borrowers at risk of running out of savings buffers over the next year or so would likely remain at low single-digit levels," she said.

My colleague Michael Janda has written up the speech here:

Also, apropos of nothing, I've been reading through Jean-Baptiste Say's Treatise on Political Economy (1821) recently, and I'd forgotten how quotable he was. 

Here are three examples from a single (!) page:

"It is impossible to avoid a precipice, when one follows a road that leads nowhere else."

"The potentates of Asia, and all sovereigns, who have no hopes of establishing a credit, have recourse to the accumulation of treasure. Treasure is the reserve of past, whereas a loan is the anticipation of future revenue."

"The command of a large sum is a dangerous temptation to a national administration. Though accumulated at their expense, the people rarely, if ever profit by it: yet in point of fact, all value, and consequently, all wealth, originates with the people."

In their wrap of the week, ANZ's economics team have reiterated their view that they don't think the RBA will need to hike rates again. 

And they think the cash rate target, which is currently 4.35 per cent, will stay at 4.35 per cent until November next year.

They think housing prices will finish 2023 up 10 per cent year on year,  and they expect the ongoing housing shortage to support prices and cause further deterioration in affordability. 

"We expect housing price growth of 6% in 2024 and 5% in 2025," they say.

And they say this week's data showed our labour markets are continuing to weaken:

• Employment rose by 55,000 in October, thanks to a temporary lift in jobs related to the Voice referendum. But looking ahead, we expect cooling in the labour market. ANZ-Indeed Australian Job Ads fell sharply in November, and our new hours-based full-time employment indicator suggests overall employment momentum is slowing.

The economics team at UBS has put out a little note on the RBA's new statement on the conduct of monetary policy.

My colleague Michael Janda wrote about that statement a little earlier, focusing on the "full employment" aspects of the agreement between the RBA and treasurer.

Here's what the UBS team has to say about that part of the statement:

"The RBA effectively now has an explicit 'dual mandate', as it is required to explain how it's 'balancing its inflation and full employment objectives'. 

"In the near-term, this means less focus for policy to be 'restrictive' to slow GDP and force enough of a rise in unemployment to ease inflation pressure quickly. 

"Hence, this reduces this risk of additional hikes in the near-term; albeit the RBA's desire for a 'narrow path to a soft landing' has already acted in this manner."

Jumping over to the sharemarket quickly, the ASX200 index has spent the last few hours clawing back its early morning losses.

At 1.50pm AEDT, it's sitting 10 points higher.

I've put together this graph to show the relationship between unemployment and job vacancies.

In the September quarter last year, we experienced the extremely rare situation there was one unemployed person for every job vacancy. 

That was the peak of our labour market tightness.

But ever since then, the number of job vacancies has been slowly declining from that record high (although they're still much higher than their pre-COVID level).

In the September quarter this year, there were 509,400 officially unemployed people, but only 418,400 job vacancies — that is, 91,400 more unemployed people than vacancies.