The Australian market fell last week, with Europe's debt crisis playing havoc with investor sentiment.

The market failed to fire despite the RBA cutting the official cash rate for the first time in two and a half years.

The ASX 200 fell 72 points (-1.7%) for the week, closing at 4281.

The retailers didn't get much benefit from the rate cut; David Jones sank 8.8% and JB Hi-Fi tumbled 7.9%.

Most of the big resource stocks weakened; Rio Tinto (ASX:RIO) dropped 0.3% and BHP (ASX:BHP) fell 1.9%. However Fortescue bucked the trend, finishing up 1.6% for the week.

The energy majors were mixed with Woodside climbing 1.9% and Santos (ASX:STO) falling by 0.6%.

The big banks struggled, with Westpac falling 2.6% and ANZ (ASX:ANZ) slumping 4.8% for the week.

The two majors both reported record full year profits, but came under pressure after their earnings missed analyst estimates.

Economics

Last week's key economic event was the RBA's decision to cut the official cash rate by 25 basis points to 4.50%.

The move was widely anticipated by economists and came on the back of recent data showing moderating inflationary pressures.

The central bank cited the global volatility as a key reason behind what was its first rate cut in two and a half years.

The RBA said that CPI was above its target band but was beginning to decline amid slowing economic growth in Australia, China and the US.

It further noted that the high Aussie dollar had contained inflation and that confidence outside the resources sector was subdued.

The focus now turns to this Thursday's jobs data, which will offer further insight on the extent of the non-mining sector slowdown.

Earlier today, we had data showing the number of job ads falling 0.7% in October, which doesn't bode well ahead of the official release.

Overseas

Volatility returned with a vengeance last week, with the major indices suffering major falls due to the ongoing saga that is Europe's debt crisis.

In a move that surprised everyone, Greece's Prime Minister called for a referendum on whether his country should accept the next tranche of its bailout money.

EU leaders were blindsided by the move, particularly as they spent much of the prior week coming up with an agreement to help Greece and other struggling eurozone countries.

The call for a referendum spooked markets, which feared a 'no' vote would be the likely outcome, thus leading to a disorderly Greek default.

However the Greek PM backed off this threat towards the end of the week, helping to calm nervous investors.

US markets snapped their weekly winning streak due to the crisis, with the Dow (-2%), S&P500 (-2.5%) and Nasdaq (-1.9%) all ending lower.

European indices suffered even heavier losses, with Germany and France sinking more than 6% each.

Across Asia, the Shanghai Composite bucked the negative trend to finish up 2.2% amid hopes China will take steps to stimulate its economy.

Most commodities weren't spared from the global rout, with aluminium and nickel slumping more than 4% each.

There were some minor exceptions, however, with gold (+0.5%) and oil (+1%) eking out modest gains for the week.

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Trading Markets Weekly Summary: November 7 is a post from: Australian Stock Report Market Pulse Blog