Rise and Shine: Everything you need to know before the ASX opens

On Stockhead today,

Rob Badmanana’s look at what’s happening on the High Voltage battery metals market, a bunch of uranium stock picks from Tribeca’s Guy Keller, and Earlybird Eddy’s deep dive into how ASX biotech investors should read the 4C Report.

But first …

… welcome to 18 January – a date seared into the memories of all UFO-watchers and Space Alien Believers, as it was on this day in 1644 that a group of very confused people in the US city of Boston saw a UFO.

According to local Puritan and governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony John Winthrop’s diary: “About midnight, three men, coming in a boat to Boston, saw two lights arise out of the water near the north point of the town cove, in form like a man, and went at a small distance to the town, and so to the south point, and there vanished away.”

Riveting stuff, no doubt – but what makes this remarkable is that it’s not the first mention of UFO’s in Winthrop’s diary. The first mention of UFO sightings over Boston came several year earlier, with a much lengthier description which is fascinating because the poor, flummoxed yokels who saw it had close to zero chance of describing it without sounding like total lunatics.

Winthrop wrote at the time that a chap called James Everell, who he describes as “a sober, discreet man” – translation, not a drunkard like the rest of Boston at the time – and two other guys were rowing along the Muddy River swamplands, then “they saw a great light in the night sky”.

“When it stood still, it flamed up, and was about three yards square,” Winthrop writes, “when it ran, it was contracted into the figure of a swine.”

It wasn’t until a third mysterious apparition took to the skies that Winthrop managed to come up with an explanation – which doesn’t hold a lot of water, considering that the first looked like a man, and the second took the form of an airborne, burning pig.

The last of them, however, added a far more sinister portion to the tales of lights in the sky over Boston – a loud, unearthly voice commanding “Boy! Boy! Come away! Come away!” that Winthrop claims was heard by a number of very sober people.

Thus, Boston’s proto-Mulder decided that he knew what was up, and discounted any thought that they might be spaceships or aliens or a very early start to the CIA’s MK-Ultra program.

The very idea of a spacecraft would obviously have been a completely (forgive me) alien concept for the mid-1600s Puritans… especially since the Ancient Egyptians were still holding up their end of the NDA they signed to get the pyramids built on time, and those wily South Americans had moved on from worshipping ET to far more sedate ways to honour the gods, cheerfully murdering children by the basketload to ensure the corn would grow.

Instead, Winthrop mustered all his available intelligence and seized upon recent events, specifically a rather tragic occurrence during which a sailor had mistakenly set fire to quite a lot of gunpowder on board a vessel, captained by John Chaddock, breaking the boat and its crew down to their constituent molecules in a very short length of time.

So the answer was blindingly obvious – there were no aliens or spaceships harassing Boston… it was just a bunch of ghosts. Case closed.

There’s a danger in leaping to conclusions, as Winthrop has quite nicely illustrated (because it’s painfully obvious to anyone with even half a brain that they were, clearly, alien spaceships on the hunt for some fresh Puritan anuses to probe).

To help you not leap to erroneous conclusions, the Stockhead team has been hard at work making logical reason out of the innumerable waves of data and noise that spew forth from the ASX on a daily basis.

COMMODITY/FOREX/CRYPTO MARKET PRICES

Gold: US$2,006.09 (-1.06%)

Silver: US$22.51 (-1.75%)

Nickel (3mth): US$16,150/t (-0.42%)

Copper (3mth): US$8,354.50/t (-0.32%)

Oil (WTI): US$72.97 (+0.79%)

Oil (Brent): US$78.14 (-0.19%)

Iron 62pc Fe: US$135.79/t (-0.7%)

AUD/USD: 0.6556 (-0.50%)

Bitcoin: US$42,690 (-1.62%)

WHAT GOT YOU TALKING YESTERDAY?

Eddy’s health wrap had a lot of folks talking yesterday, and it wasn’t just because of that photo of a guy who is clearly elated just to still be alive, despite clearly being more than 900 years old.

In #ASX #health #stocks news:

🩺 Imugene jumps on positive study results
🩺 Amplia doses Phase 2a trial 1st patient@ImugeneLimited ($IMU) @ampliatx ($ATX) https://t.co/F9dkZtNo6e

— Stockhead (@StockheadAU) January 17, 2024

YESTERDAY’S ASX SMALL CAP LEADERS

Here are the best performing ASX small cap stocks:

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

Code	Company	Price	%	Volume	Market Cap
MRD	Mount Ridley Mines	0.002	100%	8,487,888	$7,784,883
FTC	Fintech Chain Ltd	0.009	50%	7,769	$3,904,618
JAV	Javelin Minerals Ltd	0.0015	50%	9,676,290	$1,633,729
KEY	KEY Petroleum	0.0015	50%	3,563,007	$2,262,928
MCT	Metalicity Limited	0.003	50%	364,999	$8,970,108
PIM	Pinnacle Minerals	0.17	42%	2,150,661	$4,159,574
SPQ	Superior Resources	0.015	25%	3,976,081	$24,014,645
ESR	Estrella Res Ltd	0.005	25%	1,751,658	$7,037,487
NRX	Noronex Limited	0.011	22%	1,564,069	$3,404,716
ASN	Anson Resources Ltd	0.12	21%	4,346,714	$127,288,178
BFC	Beston Global Ltd	0.012	20%	814,725	$19,970,469
HOR	Horseshoe Metals Ltd	0.006	20%	216,670	$3,232,393
IEC	Intra Energy Corp	0.003	20%	9,179,921	$4,151,954
RIL	Redivium Limited	0.006	20%	2,295,429	$13,654,274
TML	Timah Resources Ltd	0.031	19%	5,715	$2,307,754
FIN	FIN Resources Ltd	0.019	19%	1,369,161	$10,388,299
MAN	Mandrake Res Ltd	0.045	18%	4,705,858	$23,398,877
KOB	Koba Resources	0.099	18%	370,234	$8,855,000
NIM	Nimy Resources	0.1	18%	390,739	$11,850,440
DVL	Dorsavi Ltd	0.014	17%	26,475	$7,159,939
LIS	Lisenergy Ltd	0.1575	17%	408,640	$86,427,031
MOM	Moab Minerals Ltd	0.007	17%	2,011,300	$4,271,781
PRX	Prodigy Gold NL	0.007	17%	12,561	$10,506,647
TMK	TMK Energy Limited	0.007	17%	12,813,133	$36,735,476
R3D	R3D Resources Ltd	0.044	16%	111,033	$5,790,120

Alicanto Minerals (ASX:AQI) dominated the ladder early on Wednesday, spiking a Benaud-esque 22.22%, most likely off the back of yesterday’s announcement that the company’s Big Swede – the Skyttgruvan-Naverberg project, which lies alongside the fearsome 1,000-year-old Falun mine – is getting bigger every time the company starts poking around.

Mandrake Resources (ASX:MAN) took off at a gallop this morning, running helter skelter for 45 minutes until the ASX tugged on the handbrake and brought the party to a close – leaving Mandrake dangling at +18.4% for the morning, on a sharp increase in volume.

We’re talking roughly 7.5x the four-week average, and without a skerrick of news to the ASX as to why. There will no doubt be an explanation of sorts on the way, but at the time of writing, it remains a mystery for Scoob and the gang to unravel.

Mandrake’s trading pause was upgraded to a trading halt shortly before midday – still no explanation forthcoming. We’ll keep you posted.

Basin Energy (ASX:BSN) has timed the start of its 2024 exploration program very nicely indeed, capitalising nicely on yellowcakes high-vis on the market at the moment with news that field work has now commenced for Basin’s winter program across the entirety of the company’s Athabasca uranium projects.

That encompasses high-resolution ground Stepwise Moving Loop Time-Domain Electromagnetic survey work underway at the North Millennium and Marshall projects, while final preparations are being made for phase 2 drilling at the Geikie project.

Likewise, Pinnacle Minerals (ASX:PIM) has a timely announcement out this morning, providing an update on its Uranium-REE Wirrulla Project in South Australia.

Pinnacle is reporting that recent satellite and radar imagery analysis at Wirrulla has highlighted uranium (U3O8) mineralisation potential and defined a number of priority target areas.

Additionally, exploration has found uranium mineralisation in place, with intercepts including 3,550ppm U3O8 over 1m from 66m in hole IR1377, and 1,400ppm U3O8 over 1m from 69m in hole IR1378.

Later in the day, Biome Australia (ASX:BIO) kicked into second gear for another stab at some gains on yesterday’s announcement that it’s pushing into the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland with its first allocation of Activated Probiotics hitting pharmacies and other retailers in those regions.

YESTERDAY’S ASX SMALL CAP LAGGARDS

Here are the worst performing ASX small cap stocks:

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

Code	Company	Price	%	Volume	Market Cap
AD1	AD1 Holdings Limited	0.005	-29%	2,002,141	$6,290,539
AMM	Armada Metals	0.023	-26%	100,000	$6,448,000
FAU	First Au Ltd	0.003	-25%	3,300,000	$6,647,973
ASV	Assetvisonco	0.008	-20%	120,000	$7,258,366
HTA	Hutchison	0.033	-20%	69,481	$556,472,852
FRS	Forrestania Resources	0.03	-17%	2,151,509	$5,824,287
WCN	White Cliff Minerals	0.015	-17%	35,768,081	$22,983,468
AMD	Arrow Minerals	0.005	-17%	21,989,151	$20,842,591
CT1	Constellation Tech	0.0025	-17%	513,066	$4,424,201
RDS	Redstone Resources	0.005	-17%	1,996,969	$5,528,271
EVN	Evolution Mining Ltd	3.145	-16%	42,933,809	$7,408,149,488
WML	Woomera Mining Ltd	0.018	-14%	10,292,064	$25,580,919
ECT	Env Clean Tech Ltd.	0.006	-14%	1,211,156	$20,050,173
OPN	Oppenneg	0.006	-14%	742,537	$7,904,257
RMX	Red Mount Min Ltd	0.003	-14%	646,250	$9,357,516
TX3	Trinex Minerals Ltd	0.006	-14%	311,000	$10,409,173
CMX	Chemx Materials	0.073	-14%	40,000	$4,524,767
N1H	N1 Holdings Ltd	0.155	-14%	12,836	$15,850,003
DNA	Donaco International	0.032	-14%	2,296,716	$45,709,407
CXU	Cauldron Energy Ltd	0.045	-13%	12,699,561	$58,907,632
BPM	BPM Minerals	0.065	-13%	73,208	$5,034,166
VBS	Vectus Biosystems	0.26	-13%	10,415	$15,962,808
NIS	Nickelsearch	0.047	-13%	4,861,352	$11,531,292
AUK	Aumake Limited	0.0035	-13%	2,778,756	$7,657,627