Veteran retailer Peter Sheppard’s eponymous upmarket shoe store at the entrance to Westfield’s Pitt Street mall in Sydney was thriving before the pandemic hit.

When Australia’s retail sector was forced into hibernation as harsh social distancing rules kept shoppers indoors through April and May, Sheppard temporarily shut his Sydney store, racking up large costs with little revenue before he could gingerly reopen again.

Shoe sales in the Sydney store are down by $2.8 million. Even now, his plush Collins Street shop in Melbourne remains closed as the city’s lockdown grinds on. “It’s a disaster,” he says.

The ASX 200 has trimmed its earlier losses, but the big miners and health stocks are keeping the index in the red.

The local bourse was last 38.9 points, or 0.6 per cent, lower at 6087.3. It fell by as much as 1.1 per cent in earlier trade. As it stands, the market will record a second straight weekly loss.

BHP, Rio Tinto and Fortescue Metals are each down by between 1.4 and 1.7 per cent on softer commodities prices. Gold miner Newcrest sagged 2.8 per cent.

Biotech CSL has shed 0.8 per cent to $291.34, while fellow blue-chips Wesfarmers, Woolworths, Macquarie Group, Transurban and ResMed are all lower.

Seven West Media has put Cricket Australia on notice that it may consider terminating its portion of the game’s $1.2 billion television deal in a dramatic escalation of tension between the sport and its free-to-air broadcast partner.

Seven chief executive James Warburton fired a shot at CA this week in a call with investors, expressing frustration at delays in the delivery of the domestic and international schedule for the upcoming season.

CA chief executive Nick Hockley said on Thursday he could see no reason why Seven and Foxtel would not have to pay in full if they produced the same volume of content as originally planned.

Shares in the Melbourne-headquartered bookmaker Pointsbet surged as much as 78 per cent today on news of a deal with broadcasting giant NBC that will expose it to the largest sports audience of any US media group.

At 1.20pm AEST, PointsBet’s shares were 72 per cent higher at $12.90 and earlier topped $13.38.

On Friday it was announced that NBCUniversal will take a 4.9 per cent stake in ASX-listed wagering group as part of a five-year deal that makes the Australian bookmaker NBC Sports’s official betting partner in the US.

PointsBet, which has a $1 billion market value, has a relatively small operation in Australia but has been positioning to capitalise on the gradual legalisation of sports betting across the US.

Shares in salmon farmer Huon Aquaculture took a hit after the company finished a $64 million capital raising necessitated by a COVID-affected full-year result.

Huon emerged from a trading halt this morning on the completion of its raising, which was launched at $3 per share on Thursday evening in tandem with its full-year figures.

The after-market release showed profit for the year almost halved to $4.9 million as higher expenses and trade restrictions offset a jump in salmon harvest size, and total revenue.

The ASX 200 slipped by as much as 1.1 per cent on Friday as softer commodity prices weigh the big miners down and health stocks also sag.

The index was last 59.8 points, or 1 per cent, lower at 6066.2 and heading for a second straight weekly loss.

Just three days ago the ASX 200 touched a new five-month intraday high of 6199.2, and closed at a near five-month peak of 6161.4.

The major miners are deep in the red on Friday. BHP has sagged 2 per cent to $37.67, Rio Tinto is 1.4 per cent lower at $98.72, and Fortescue Metals dropped 2.3 per cent to $18.84. Goldminer Newcrest fell 2.9 per cent to $31.23.

Catie McKee was nervous. It was last October, and the 31-year-old hedge fund analyst, who had been scrutinising the mortgages on the nation’s malls, was convinced that some of those malls would default on their loans. She and her colleagues had even bet a substantial amount of money on that likelihood.

McKee was about to make her case to Carl Icahn, one of the country’s best-known investors, who had made a similar wager and invited her team to discuss the trade. Nothing would bolster her confidence — and the prospects for her trade — more than if the billionaire and onetime corporate raider backed her up.

She needn’t have worried. As McKee sat in Icahn’s wood-panelled boardroom with a sweeping view of Manhattan’s Central Park, discussing her thesis with the 83-year-old investor, she realised they shared the same outlook. Both agreed that e-commerce, changing consumer habits and evolving demographics had pummeled all malls to some degree in recent years, but some were far worse off than others. So by betting on their demise, both could profit handsomely — which they did.

Icahn, whose hostile takeover of TWA in the 1980s established him as a major dealmaker, has made $US1.3 billion ($1.8 billion) on the trade since that meeting. And the investors that made the trade within McKee’s firm, MP Securitised Credit Partners, more than doubled their money. They are among a handful of investors who have, collectively, made hundreds of millions of dollars on similar trades this year.

Full story, by The New York Times, here

NSW recorded 13 new cases overnight, including one person in hotel quarantine.

Chief Health Officer Dr Kerry Chant said, of the 13 new cases reported overnight, six cases are linked to the Sydney CBD cluster, four are locally acquired and their sources under investigation, and two are close contacts of previously reported cases not linked to known clusters.

Among the cases is a student at St Gertrude’s Primary School, Smithfield. A staff member at Ryde Secondary College has also tested positive, and will be included in Saturday’s numbers.

As previously reported, both schools were closed on Friday.