• Local shares bucked Wall Street and rose by 0.2% today
  • Lake Resources surged 20pc after lithium production announcement
  • Gold stocks were mainly down, Regis Resources fell 11pc after a production downgrade

 

Local shares gained 0.2% today, bucking Friday’s movements on Wall Street.

Discretionary and Real Estate sectors were the standouts, while Utilities and Mining lagged.

Most gold stocks were down, with Regis Resources (ASX:RRL) sinking by 11% after a guidance update.

While full-year production guidance of between 450k – 470k ounces remains the same, all-in sustaining costs have increased to $1,795 to $1,845 an ounce.

Lithium producer Lake Resources (ASX:LKE) climbed 20% after saying that its lithium-extraction technology partner, Lilac Solutions, has produced 2,500 kilograms of lithium carbonate equivalent at Project Kachi in Argentina.

LKE said it was extracted with 80% recovery, 90% plant uptime, 1,000 times less land, and 10 times less water than conventional aluminium-based absorbents.

Meanwhile, shares in logistics tech company Wisetech Global (ASX:WTC) touched an all time high of $68.89 earlier this morning, before retreating to below $68.

 

Is iron ore rebounding?

Later this week, we will see iron ore giants BHP (ASX:BHP) and Rio Tinto (ASX:RIO) provide their operational updates.

With both companies seeing a slower start to the year than they would have liked, expectations are low heading into both these updates.

However, there is some positivity, with China’s iron ore imports jumping by 10% in Q1 as the region continues to emerge from its COVID-zero regime.

“This is a sign that iron ore demand is bouncing back after question marks earlier in the year,” said Josh Gilbert, a market analyst at eToro.

“However, guidance from these two exporters may be skewed to the negative side with bad weather approaching Western Australia, with Cyclone Isla expected to have a severe impact across the mining region.”

The market will also be closely watching the RBA’s April meeting minutes, which will be released on Tuesday.

March’s minutes showed that RBA members agreed that further tightening of monetary policy would likely be required.

“Therefore investors should watch for that shift in language tomorrow,” said Gilbert.

Also, Q1 earnings season in the US moves into full swing this week, with heavy hitters Tesla and Netflix to hand down their quarterly earnings.

“Expectations are for S&P500 earnings to decline by 6% this quarter compared with the same period last year, a sharp fall,” said Gilbert.

 

Samsung to replace Google with Bing – report

China’s reserve bank, the PBOC, has pumped 170 billion yuan (US$25 billion) into its banking system since last November.

The PBOC has also left its rates unchanged today at 2.75%, in line with consensus.

Samsung phones may replace Google as the default search service engine and use Microsoft’s Bing instead, according to a story in The New York Times.

Bing’s threat to Google’s search dominance has grown recently after Microsoft invested US$10bn into OpenAI’s ChatGPT platform.

 

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Lithium producer Sayona Mining (ASX:SYA) surged 11% after upgrading its mineral resource estimate for its 60%-owned Moblan project in Quebec. Sayona has estimated a Moblan mineral resource of 70.9 million tonnes at 1.15% lithium oxide.

 

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BHP (ASX:BHP) fell 0.2% after the Federal Court approved the acquisition of Oz Minerals (ASX:OZL), which ended flattish today. OZ Minerals shares are expected to be suspended from the close of Tuesday.

Fletcher Building (ASX:FBU) fell 2.5% after announcing that it has set aside $15 million to compensate hundreds of complaints of leaks associated with a pipe product sold by its Iplex pipes business.

Perseus Mining (ASX:PRU) dropped 4% after revealing a few problems in its Sudanese operations following reports of armed conflict in and around Khartoum.

St Barbara (ASX:SBM) tumbled 4% after selling its flagship Gwalia mine to Genesis Minerals (ASX:GMD) in exchange for $370 million of cash, and 15%-19.9% stake shares in Genesis.

 

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