Anthony McDonald

The big one, though, I thought this week, James, was Westpac.

Yeah, I agree.

It's not so much hit by oil prices or jet fuel or anything like that directly, but its hit is more about the economy as a whole and what two interest rate rises, expectations of another two interest rate rises.

those higher fuel prices due to the broader economy.

And as economic growth slows, profit in a bank should also slow.

So it came out and added to its provisions looking forward.

So for bad loans, it just sort of whacked itself with an extra charge just because it thinks the whole economy is slowing to the point where it's probably not going to make as much money on its current loans as it had expected.

Now, it was only a small whack it gave to itself.

But symbolic.

Yeah, it's symbolic.

And if Westpac's doing it, you can be guaranteed, Commonwealth Bank will be thinking about it, National Australia Bank, ANZ, and all the other banks.

We also got a trading update from Clean Away Waste, the big garbage truck company, $20 million hit to earnings from higher diesel prices.

It says- Makes sense.

It can recover diesel costs from customers, but there's a bit of a lag there, so investors are getting pinched meantime.

And like you said in the opener, A2 Milk, I mean, its business is basically selling baby formula products.

here and also exporting it over to China.

It called out supply chain issues in the shipping industry, which obviously has been hit by this closure in the Strait of Hormuz and just the movement of goods has slowed down.

So we have airlines talking about it, you've got banks talking about it, you've got infant formula company talking about it, big industrial user like Clean Away talking about it.

The impact out there in the broader economy, it's got to be much wider.

And I don't think we've seen the start of it yet in terms of companies coming out and revealing their hit to profits.