Afternoon Report | Banks push ASX to new record

This is the Fear and Greed Afternoon Report - everything you need to know about what happened in the markets, economy and world of business today, in just a few minutes.

1. ASX closes higher

2. Calls to dump stamp duty

3. Google hit with massive fine

4. Indonesia drops aid to Palestine

5. World leaders arrive in US

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to the Fear and Greed Business News Afternoon Report
for Monday, the eighteenth of August twenty twenty five. Oh
Michael Thompson. Every afternoon, we got the five stories that
happened today that you need to know about. So let's
go story number one. Another record for the local share
market today, the S and PA sex two hundred, hitting
an intra day high for the sixth consecutive session. The
BOSS closed zero point two percent higher at eighty nine

(00:26):
hundred and sixty points. That's a closing high as well,
and the intra day high set earlier in the day
was a few points above that. Banks were strong performers today,
led by NAB. Its shares closed two point seven percent
higher after it gave a June quarter update, even though
it did flag one hundred and thirty million dollar spike
in operating expenses this financial year, partly caused by underpayment

(00:48):
of staff. Westpac continued its strong run. Commonwealth Bank even
climbed one point two percent after a selloff last week.
As for the big miners, a bit of a slump
in iron ore prices saw BHP and Rio Tinto down
more than one percent. A huge drop in profit for
blue Scope Steel from more than eight hundred million dollars
down to about eighty four million dollars, led to a

(01:10):
three point one percent decline in its share price, and
Quantus's share price was down about half of one percent
after the airline was fined ninety million dollars for illegally
sacking eighteen hundred workers during the pandemic. On to story
number two now and on the eve of the government's
economic reform round table, Productivity Commission Chair Daniel Wood has
gone straight for two of Australia's most contentious taxes, stamp

(01:33):
duty on property and the fringe benefits tax break for
electric vehicles. In a speech to the National Press Club today,
Would called stamp duty exceptionally economically damaging and said it
should be wound back in favor of a broad based
land tax, and she warned the EV fringe benefits concession
is duplicative and high cost, with the Productivity Commission estimating

(01:55):
that it costs between one thousand dollars and twenty thousand
dollars per ton of carbon abated. She also called for
a growth mindset in government. This is all as Jim
Chalmers gathers business and policy leaders in Canberra tomorrow. Productivity
is right at the top of the agenda.

Speaker 2 (02:11):
Story number three. Google has been hit with a fifty
five million dollar fine here in Australia for anti competitive
deals with Telstra and Optus. The a Triple C says
Google's Asia Pacific arms struck agreements that forced the telcos
to pre install Google Search on Android phones sold between
late twenty nineteen and early twenty twenty one, essentially shutting

(02:32):
out rival search engines. In return, Telstra and Optus pocketed
a share of Google's ad revenue from those searches. Google
has admitted liability and signed a court enforceable undertaking pledging
to strip out pre installation and default search restrictions from
its contracts with Android manufacturers and telco's. Story number four.

(02:52):
Indonesian forces have air dropped almost eighteen tons of humanitarian
aid for the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip to
coincide with Indonesia's Independence Day. The Australian newspaper reports that
the Indonesian mission arrived in Jordan on Friday for the
ad drop on Sunday local time. It was part of
a multinational operation led by Jordan and consisted of sixty

(03:13):
six personnel and two Hercules aircraft. The delivery was dropped
using parachutes, including ready to eat meals, medicine, emergency supplies,
and other essential goods. The Indonesian military described it in
a statement as a demonstration not only of Indonesia's concern
for the suffering of the Palestinian people, but also a
message of solidarity and finally, story number five. Ukrainian President

(03:36):
Vladimir Zelenski has arrived in Washington, DC ahead of his
meeting with Donald Trump overnight Australian time, but he will
not be on his own, with the leaders of France, Britain, Germany, Italy,
NATO and the European Commission all accompanying him to the
Oval Office for talks about ending the war in Ukraine.
Trump posted on social media that he'd never had so
many European leaders at one time and it was his

(03:58):
great honor to host them, but it is going to
be a challenging meeting, CNN reports the US President has
indicated he'll tells Zelenski to agree to sum of Russia's conditions,
including that Ukraine give up Crimea, which Russia annexed back
in twenty fourteen, and agree never to join NATO. The
president is also hoping to tear up a meeting between
Zelenski and Russian lead of Vladimir Putin within a week.

(04:19):
That's it for the afternoon Report for Monday, the eighteenth
of August twenty twenty five. Make sure you're following the
podcast and we'll be back tomorrow morning with the Tuesday
edition of Fear and Greed.

Speaker 1 (04:29):
I'm Michael Thompson. Enjoy your evening.