Lunchtime ASX small cap wrap: Who’s trying to ease the burden today?

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As daily life changes (broadly for the worse) for millions of Australians, it’s been a case of all-hands-on-deck for domestic policymakers.

In fact, yesterday marked a historic day on Australian capital markets, with dramatic swings across stocks, bonds and the Australian dollar and and unprecedented stimulus response from Australia’s central bank.

This morning, our major commercial banks got in the act, announcing plans to go easy on Australian small business in an effort to keep the economy afloat.

The big four said they would defer loan payments to small businesses for a period of six months — a move expected to free up around $8bn from a total loan pool of around $100bn.

The end goal is to try and keep a lid on the negative ripple effects that will spill out from a sharp rise in unemployment.

Across the domestic economy, small businesses employ around 5 million Australians which is equivalent to around 60 per cent of the total workforce.

More fiscal stimulus from the federal government is also expected later today. As policy makers pledge to do “whatever it takes” to hold the line as the corona crisis worsens, stock investors have gotten some brief respite to end the week.

Just after midday trade, the ASX200 was more than 3 per cent higher at 4,938.60 points, while the Small Ords index was up 2.6 per cent at 2,007.60 points.

WINNERS

Here are the best performing ASX small cap stocks at 12pm Friday March 20:

Swipe or scroll to reveal the full table. Click headings to sort.

Bigtincan Holdings (ASX:BTH)

The software company benefited from the fact that in the current climate, no news is good news.

Like many companies over the past week, Bigtincan released a trading update to advise investors how its operations were being impacted by COVID-19.

The company said it hadn’t seen any change in demand for its core products, and reaffirmed its pre-corona guidance of annual organic revenue growth of between 30 to 40 per cent.

Merely by not downgrading its forecast, shares in Bigtincan shot up by more than 30 per cent in morning trade.

Here’s a list of other companies that are holding strong to their forecasts amid the crisis.

LOSERS

Here are the worst performing ASX small cap stocks at 12pm Friday March 20:

Swipe or scroll to reveal the full table. Click headings to sort.

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