This morning on the ASX, a graph: 

 

In the end the ASX stayed a little down in the mouth, but the fluctuations of the ASX 200 through this morning were instructive, diving when Malcolm Turnbull told the Parliament that the Opposition would not vote for the Rudd package in the Senate (eek!) and then picking itself up and dusting itself off when December retail figures were issued at 11.30am (phew!), figures that showed just how effective the first instalment of Rudd stimulation late last year had been — if giving retail a fillip had been the aim of the government’s $10 billion pre-Christmas largesse.

Mr Turnbull will be hoping that his polling figures don’t show a similar inclination to the downward vertical on the back of this morning’s “brave” stand.