The All Ordinaries Index (ASX: XAO) is not having a fun end to the week's trading so far this Friday. At the time of writing, the All Ords is down by 0.46% at 7,654 points.
But one ASX share is leaving this index in the dust today. That would be the Laybuy Holdings Ltd (ASX: LBY) share price.
Laybuy shares are currently up an extraordinary 41.94% at 22 cents a share after closing at 16 cents a share yesterday and opening at the same price this morning. So what could be causing such an enthusiastic investor pile-on into Laybuy shares today?
Well, sadly, it's not entirely clear what has sparked this dramatic jump in pricing. There are no major pieces of news or announcements out of Laybuy today. Or for a few days in fact.
The last major development we got from Laybuy was the news that it is set to be kicked out of the S&P/ASX All Technology Index (ASX: XTX) on 20 December. But that was a week ago.
Image source: Getty Images
Why is the Laybuy share price rocketing today?
There has been some recent news surrounding the entire buy now, pay later (BNPL) space that Laybuy is a part of though. As my Fool colleague Brooke covered earlier this week, Financial Counselling Australia made some waves when it found BNPL was being misused due to its exclusion from credit provision laws. It also found that BNPL companies were failing to support customers in hardship.
We also covered potential new laws that the government is considering that would bring BNPL regulation into line with other payments earlier this week as well.
If you're wondering why these developments might be causing the Laybuy share price to jump so violently today, consider this. Before this morning's open, Laybuy shares had lost more than 25% of their value since the start of the week. Even after today's massive jump, the Laybuy share price is still down by close to 3% over the past 5 trading days.
It appears all of this talk of increased BNPL regulation has caused some significant volatility in the Laybuy share price. Today's jump could just be some investors who wanted to buy up big after the steep falls earlier in the week.
Whatever the cause of today's moves, it will no doubt come as a relief for shareholders.
At the current Laybuy Holdings share price, this BNPL company has a market capitalisation of $39.44 million.
