At the start of this week, the coalition of Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi swept to a historic election win.

The conservative Ms Takaichi, who said she was inspired by Britain’s “Iron Lady”, Margaret Thatcher, is a staunch ally of US President Donald Trump.

Now, her trade minister Ryosei Akazawa has agreed to accelerate talks with the US on the first batch of deals under Japan’s $US550 billion ($776 billion) investment package

“As there remain areas where Japan and the United States need further coordination, we agreed to work closely together to develop projects,” Mr Akazawa told reporters in Washington.

Japan had been under pressure to move faster on implementing the investment package agreed as part of Tokyo’s deal with Washington to reduce tariffs on Japanese exports.

Last July, Japan and the US announced a trade agreement covering energy, AI, and chips—in exchange for lower tariffs of 15% on Japanese cars and other goods.

The deal aimed to reduce the US trade deficit and boosts US agricultural, defence, and manufacturing access to Japan.

But critics of the Trump administration say the deals are often inflated in value — more concepts of a plan with a grand announcement rather than a concrete agreement — that countries can easily walk back in the future.

With reporting by Reuters

The majority of the big four banks are coming under selling pressure as we head into the afternoon session on the Australian share market.

At midday AEDT:

CBA down 1.1% to $176.77

WBC down 1.7% to 40.32

NAB down 1.3% to $45.92

ANZ bucking the trend up 0.1% to $40.41.

There’s been some confusion around Westpac’s 1st quarter earnings update and the reported NIM (net interest margin).

It’s all pretty straight forward.

At an extremely basic level, banks make money from the difference between the money they make lending cash, and the money they pay holding deposits.

Practically speaking it’s the difference between the interest rates charged on mortgage products and the interest rates paid to customers for deposits.

The difference between these interest rates is the net interest margin (NIM).

Although we have to be careful because the NIM also factors into account a bank’s funding sources.

For example, banks fund their standard variable rate mortgage products via the short-term money market, and their fixed rate products through the longer-term market (including the 10-year US Treasury market, among others).

Recently, banks have preferred to fund mortgages through customer deposits — because it’s seen as more stable given recent bond market volatility.

Westpac reported its Net Interest Margin decreased by 1 basis point (0.01%) to 1.94% in the first quarter.

Its core NIM fell 3 basis points (0.03%) to 1.79%.

Similar to headline and core inflation, the “core” NIM is a better measure of the interest income for a bank — it strips out volatility.

So, let’s focus on the core NIM.

Westpac told the ASX the drop in the core NIM related to increased “competition” and “the lower interest rate environment, including time impacts”.

One can conclude that competitive forces encourage Westpac to lower the prices of its mortgage faster the tweaking the prices its deposit products.

Although there may have been offshore funding cost pressure too.

Phillip,

Was it something I said?

One can only wonder.

DT

Shares in Webjet (ASX: WJL) have dived 23% or 17.5 cents to 60 cents.

A few things to note:

There’s no technical definition of a crash but it’s widely understood by market participants to be a fall of 20% or more.

Webjet is a small cap stock, so any price move looks big, relatively speaking.

Stock prices of small cap stocks are quoted in fractions of cents.

Gold and silver are both recovering in Asian trade.

Gold is up 0.5% to $US4,942 at 11:15am AEDT.

Silver is 1% higher at $US75.98.

The Australian dollar though is trading flat at 70.9 US cents.

I’m taking over the blog hot seat and will walk you through the day in business and finance from here.

Always happy for your comments and questions.

Is this the Friday 13th curse? The ASX 200 has opened 1% lower today, while the All Ords is down marginally more.

Some of the biggest losers include Pro Medicus, which is still dropping notably after its reporting day yesterday. You can see an interview with its CEO by ABC’s Kirsten Aiken here.

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The ASX is dropping after a late session sell-off on Wall Street, with tech stocks dropping especially.

The Australian Open has been credited with helping drive household spending last month.

For the 16th consecutive month, household spending  increased across the nation, according to the latest CommBank Household Spending Insights (HSI) Index.

It rose by 0.5% in January, with families splashing the cash on recreation, including tennis tickets for an annual growth of 5.6%

Recreation led the way, with spending up 1% in January, sitting at 7.6% over the year.

“Consumers splashed out on tickets, travel and fitness, with major events including the Australian Open tennis and summer festivals drawing strong crowds,” the report said

“Spending rose across ticketing services, tourist attractions and travel agencies, reflecting households’ continued appetite for summer experiences.”

The report also found that spending on utlities increased by 3.7% as energy rebates were scaled back.

And New South Wales recorded the strongest monthly spending growth of all the states and territories.

Wages “have been tracking broadly sideways”, the report said, although there had been a gradual lift in quarterly outcomes since mid-2025.

CBA data showed quarterly wage growth at 0.8% and annual growth at 3.1%.

But the report warned of “headwinds building late in 2026”, with the RBA predicted to increase interest rates for a second time in the year in May.

“Households have been supported by a solid labour market and healthy balance sheets, but higher interest rates and easing wage growth are expected to slow spending as the year progresses,” CBA Senior Economist Ashwin Clarke said.

• ASX 200: -0.8% to 9043.5
• Australian dollar: +0.1% to 70.90 US cents
• Wall Street: S&P 500: -1.5% Nasdaq: -2.1%
• Europe: EuroStoxx: -0.5% DAX: flat
• Spot gold: -0.1% to $US4,914/ounce
• Brent crude: -2.8% to $US67.55/barrel
• Bitcoin: -1% to $US66,385

Price current around 10:33am AEDT

Live updates on the major ASX indices:

Australia Post is mandated by law to send letters, and to service regional and remote Australia. The letters part of its business has long been a drag on profits, with it loss-leading and subsidised by parcels.

Last year, its CEO Paul Graham told ABC News that there will come a time when the Commonwealth-entity reduces letter services further, with it now delivering them only every second day to households. That time hasn’t come yet though, he said then.

Today Australia Post has announced it’s asking the ACCC to increase the price of a standard stamp from $1.70 to $1.85, which works out to a 15 cent increase or 8.8% extra.

Here’s a statement from Mr Graham.

“As letter volumes continue to fall as customers increasingly take up digital options, Australia Post needs to ensure the Letters service remains sustainable now and into the future.

“The proposed increase is one of the ways we are responsibly addressing our financial challenges so we can keep serving our customers and communities.”

Australia’s national postage agency wants to increase the price of a stamp for a standard letter by 15 cents to $1.85. Its asking the consumer watchdog to approve this, as it battles declining revenue and margins on sending snail mail.

Its arguing that fewer than 3% of all letters are actually sent by individuals, so it’ll mostly be businesses and government agencies paying extra to send a letter.

“The average cost impact to Australian households of the proposed price increase to $1.85 will be less than $1 extra per year, and Australia would still have one of the lowest stamp prices in the OECD,” they say.

Letter volumes dropped 11.7% in FY25, they said, plunging levels to the same as the 1930s. Losses on letters was $230 million. That’s opposed to packages, which subsidise letters.

Meanwhile, Australia Post says it’ll keep offering concession and seasonal greeting stamps for 60 and 65 cents respectively. These prices have been the same for a decade.

When was the last time you sent a letter? Will this extra 15 cents mean anything to you? Comment here!

Look, it’s not expected.

Just out of curiosity, I looked up what the ASX 200 did last time the Liberals had a formal spill motion. Take your minds back to August 2018, during that turbulent time where Malcolm Turnbull resigned, and Scott Morisson eventually came out on top on August 18.

The ASX 200 rose 0.3% that day.

The two travel companies have been locked in merger discussions for months but now Webjet has told the ASX the deal isn’t good enough and talks are over.

Webjet was in discussions with Helloworld and BGH Capital. It had told the ASX about having ACCC clearance for the deal only in December.

Here’s part of Webjet’s statement:

“Over the last 12 weeks, Webjet has engaged constructively with Helloworld and BGH, providing each with due diligence access.

“The Webjet Board has not however received a proposal from either party that is consistent with the respective indicative proposals or capable of being put to shareholders.”

“As a result, the Webjet Board has determined that management’s time, focus and resources should return wholly to executing the company’s existing strategy.”

 Capital’s analyst Kyle Rodda has put out a note about the market upheavel overnight on Wall Street, arguing that “a pinpoint catalyst for the overnight move is basically absent”.

“It looks like it will be another sea of red washing over the markets on this Friday the 13th as stocks are offloaded and assets like precious metals and Bitcoin get dumped,” he says.

The Nasdaq dropped 2% with tech company Cisco’s share price tumbling 11.8% after its profitability targets missed investors’ expectations.

“Cisco’s results certainly put a dampener on things. But the narrative here is about AI overinvestment, valuations and disruption,” he writes.

“There’s also a technical element here. The deleveraging and repositioning that began with the gold and silver melt down probably hasn’t played-out entirely, causing cross asset weakness and volatility.”

The world’s biggest crypto Bitcoin’s also down 2.4%.

“It suggests the Bitcoin fire alarm is working well but augurs poorly for the rest of the market when such a risk-asset is struggling to catch a bid,” Rodda writes.

You can catch Kyle on ABC’s The Business too, where he chats about the huge dives on the ASX 200 yesterday.

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The Australian share market is set for a sell-off at the open, with futures showing a drop of 0.6% around 7:30am AEST.

That’s after Wall Street endured a risk-off moment towards the end of session. Several big tech companies fell short of earnings expectations.

Precious metals were also caught in downdraft with the silver price tracking a technical correction, down 11% at one point.

A bond rally also signifies heightened risk in financial markets.

Westpac, the latest Big Four bank to report its results this week, has reported a statutory net profit gain of 5% in the last quarter to $1.9 billion dollars.

It follows profit jumps by CBA and ANZ as well. Both of these banks were some of the biggest performers on the ASX 200 yesterday, helping drag up the index overall.

We’ll bring you more soon.

ABC’s The Business presenter Kirsten Aiken interviewed the boss of Pro Medicus, after the company’s stock totally dived 23% on the ASX yesterday on its latest results.

Sam Rupert founded the company back in 1983. Today, it’s best known for making IT company specialising in imaging for the healthcare space, and its app Visage 7.

Mr Rupert believes the company was “caught up in some of (the) wash” of general market sentiment on Thursday, but also acknowledged there is concerns about whether the imaging company’s core products could be replaced cheaply by AI.

“AI and medicine are very well suited to each other, and we see a big role for AI and diagnostic imaging going forward, and we believe we’ll be part of that,” he told the ABC.

“You can’t just go ‘Hey, Claude’ or ‘Hey, Siri’ and out pops a Visage Mark II.”

Watch more here:

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Treasurer Jim Chalmers has appointed a leading macro-economist to the interest rate-setting board of the Reserve Bank as part of a push to boost its expertise.

Bruce Preston, a professor of economics at the University of New South Wales and a former Treasury and RBA official, will join the board in March, replacing the outgoing Alison Watkins.