Wall Street rebounds

US stocks staged a rebound overnight, following Monday’s tech-driven selloff.

All three US stock market benchmarks rose – the Dow Jones up by 0.92%, the S&P 500 by 1.05% ,and tech heavy Nasdaq by 1.25%.

Investors bought the dips on strong tech names such as Google (up 1.8%) and Apple (up 1.4%).

Tech stocks have generally struggled since the US Fed said it will start tapering its asset purchases this year, bringing forward expectations of a rate hike.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has again warned the US economy would fall into another recession if Congress doesn’t raise the debt limit within two weeks.

Failure to raise the debt ceiling would push the US into a default, raising borrowing costs and eliminating millions of jobs – analysts predicted.

In other markets, oil prices climbed by 2% overnight, as OPEC decided not to lift production supply more than what was already planned.

Thermal coal rose another 12% to US$269.50/t, but iron ore has been quiet as China goes on national holidays this week.

Meanwhile, despite a record trade surplus announced yesterday, the Aussie dollar failed to mount a rally, and is trading flat at US$0.7285.

To cryptos, where Bitcoin is rising again, and is trading at US$51,700 at 8:30am AEST this morning from the US$49,000 level yesterday.

According to the New York Digital Investment Group, data has confirmed that BTC is the best-performing “asset class” of 2021 so far – on a global scale.

ASX 200 to open higher on Wednesday

The ASX 200 looks set to open higher this morning, with futures markets (December contracts) pointing up by 0.49% at 8:30am AEST.

Yesterday, the Aussie benchmark closed 0.41% down at 7,248 points, and tech was easily the worst sector, down 2.97%.

In large cap news this morning, A2 Milk (ASX:A2M) says it will defend a class action brought against the company by shareholders who purchased A2M shares between 19 August 2020 and 9 May 2021.

The class action alleged that A2M engaged in misleading and deceptive conduct as the stock price plunged 60% during this nine-month period.

On the IPO front, set to list on the ASX today are two mineral explorers : Alvo Minerals (ASX:ALV) which has raised $10m at 25c a share, and Nickel Search (ASX:NIS) which has raised $10m at 20c a share.

5 ASX small caps to watch today

AD1 Holdings (ASX:AD1)
The software company announced that its subsidiary, Art of Mentoring (AoM), posted record revenue in the quarter that broke its previous record by 94%. AoM is a corporate program that mentors relationships and forge employee bonds in the workplace.

Volpara Health (ASX:VHT)
The breast imaging specialist delivered record quarterly growth in new annual recurring revenue (ARR), adding US$1.2m in what has been historically the slowest quarter. The company estimates it now has at least one software product contracted to be used in the breast cancer screening of approximately 34% of US women.

EM Vision Medical Devices (ASX:EMV)
The company has received a feedback from the FDA, which said that preliminary evidence supports the potential of EMV’s technology to differentiate and localise haemorrhagic and ischemic stroke, however additional clinical study data is required. EMVision advised it has not been granted BDD (Breakthrough Device Designation) at this time.

Shree Minerals (ASX:SHH)
The explorer said that new gold targets were identified at its Kookynie West Project. These targets have geological similarities to those at the nearby Genesis Minerals ASX:GMD)’s Ulysses Gold Project.

Legacy Iron Ore (ASX:LCY)
The explorer announced results from its maiden RC drilling at the Sunrise Bore gold project. The intersections include: 3m at 2.06g/t Au from 47m, and 2m at 0.95g/t Au from 53m.

 

At Stockhead we tell it like it is. While Volpara is a Stockhead advertiser, it did not sponsor this article.

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