With APRA tightening its lending standards, banks have been amongst the morning’s losers with the ASX down after early gains.
At time of writing, the S&P/ASX200 was lower, dropping 22.50 points or 0.31% to 7,225.90.
Over the last five days, the index has gained 0.41% and 9.70% year to date.
While the banking sector was down, along with the travel sector, tech stocks were recovering with Afterpay leading the way.
The bottom-performing stocks on the ASX 200 were Washington H Soul Pattinson & Company Ltd down 4.61% and The A2 Milk Company Ltd down 4.29%.
In other news …
New Zealanders will now pay 25 basis points more on their mortgages after the RBNZ raised rates 0.5%.
"These immediate relative price shocks risk leading to more generalised price rises," the RBNZ said amidst a CPI inflation increase of more than 4% in the near term highlighted by higher oil prices, transport costs and supply shortfalls.
Meanwhile, Facebook continues to fight off the armies that have surrounded it amid allegations of neglect and profiteering.
Zuckerberg speaks out
In the wake of his $7 billion loss yesterday after the social media giant’s outage, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has faced his critics, most notably whistleblower Frances Haugen who testified to a US congress that new laws should be implemented to regulate social media companies.
Haugen has called for an increase in the minimum age for any person using social media to 17-years-old from 13.
Yesterday’s outage highlighted the potential damage of the platform to those too young to deal with it, with Haugen raising concerns around Facebook’s algorithms and how it affects the mental health of its young users.
Zuckerberg hit back, saying: "We care deeply about issues like safety, well-being and mental health. It's difficult to see coverage that misrepresents our work and our motives. At the most basic level, I think most of us just don't recognize the false picture of the company that is being painted.
"Many of the claims don't make any sense … At the heart of these accusations is this idea that we prioritise profit over safety and well-being. That's just not true.
"The argument that we deliberately push content that makes people angry for profit is deeply illogical".
Whatever the outcome of the scrutiny into Facebook, it hasn’t affected the rebound in share price, with the social media company up 2.06%.
On the small cap front
Latitude Consolidated Ltd (ASX:LCD) is up 9.52% having delivered final assay results from Phase 1 drilling at St Anne’s within its Murchison Gold Project in Western Australia which returned up to 31.2 g/t gold.
QMines Ltd (ASX:QML) is up 9.33% after the reverse circulation (RC) and diamond drilling program at its flagship Mt Chalmers Project, intersected multiple wide and high-grade copper, gold and zinc mineralisation outside the known resource.
Mako Gold is up 8.99% after returning multiple wide and high-grade results including 20 metres at 3.41 g/t gold from 19 metres at its Gogbala prospect.
Lithium Australia NL (ASX:LIT, OTC:LMMFF) is up 4.35% after its Victorian battery recycling facility Envirostream Australia was issued a 99-year operating licence for battery recycling.
Other small caps of note:
- AIS +3.03%
- AME +3.53%
- ARR +4.17%
- ATX +2.38%
- AND +3.33%
- ARE +8.33%
- AMD +9.09%
- AKM +7.14%
- ASM +7.84%
- AVL +2.27%
- BDC +2.08%
- BGL +2.68%
- BSX +5.68%
- BNL +9.09%
- BOA +2.78%
- CE1 +9.09%
- CAV +8.33%
- CXU +3.45%
- CML +5.88%
- CPT +3.57%
- CPH +10%
- EPM +2.22%
- EMP +11.11%
- EUR +2.06%
- FEX 4.76%
- G1A +2.5%
- GCY +5.41%
- GEV +17.81%
- GMR +8.33%
- GBR +12.9%
- GGG +4.55%
- HHR +7.69%
- HAV +5.56%
- JRL +3.18%
- KZA +4.2%
- KIN +2.04%
- KRR +3.85%
- KSN +5.26%
- LRS +2.38%
- MXC +3.51%
- MEI +4%
- NVA +2.38%
- PNX +7.69%
- PAM +6.10%
- PAB +5%
- POS +2.3%
- QPM +2.13%
- RVR +3.03%
- SRJ +10%
- SGQ +3.03%
- SOR +3.77%
- SUD 2.17%
- STM +4.55%
- SRN +7.69%
- TMT +4.23%
- TGM +11.11%
- TEG +5.26%
- VAL +6.67%
- XTE +4.53%
- ZLD +5.41%