ASX Small Cap Lunch Wrap: Who beat Einstein and Hawking on an IQ test today?

An 11-year-old schoolboy has beaten Stephen Hawking and Albert Einstein in the Mensa IQ test, achieving the highest possible score of 162 – a whole 2 points higher than both Hawking and Einstein. 

Yusuf Shah, a Year 6 student at Wigton Moor Primary School in Leeds, UK, has his eyes on studying mathematics at Cambridge or Oxford and we’re not really surprised since he spends his spare time doing sudoku and solving Rubik’s cubes.

Yusuf Shah’s friends in Leeds are always telling him he is very smart, but he wanted to find out for himself by taking the Mensa test.

He scored 162 – the maximum IQ for under-18s, putting him in the top one percent of all people.

That’s right, *all* people (!!!) pic.twitter.com/iZ1UfCojHB

— Metro (@MetroUK) November 13, 2022

If you’re not familiar with Mensa, its like a club for people with crazy high IQs. No one is really sure what they do exactly. The website says it includes the “lively exchange of ideas” and “stimulating debates”, which is probably code for hanging out and laughing at us dummies.

TO MARKETS

The ASX 200 is trading up 0.29% at lunch today, with eight out of eleven sectors in the green.

Financials and Industrials were leading the winners, both up 0.71%. 

Westpac (ASX:WBC), ANZ (ASX:ANZ) and QBE Insurance (ASX:QBE) were all on the gain train, up 1.77%, 1.15% and 1.81% respectively.

Leading the laggards was Health Care down 0.30%, with Sonic Health Care (ASX:SHL) taking a 2.48% hit today.

NOT THE ASX

In Europe, stocks traded mixed as investors reacted to the UK government’s new fiscal plans and remarks from US Federal Reserve official James Bullard.

In London, the FTSE 100 closed down 0.1% as UK Finance Minister Jeremy Hunt’s new fiscal plan envisaged a difficult two years ahead for the economy.

“These measures will pile pressure on struggling consumers and deepen the UK’s recession, the first among major economies,” eToro analyst Ben Laidler said in a note. 

In the US, Bullard said interest rates have to rise higher to restrict the economy to an extent that brings inflation back to the Fed’s target, and while he didn’t say a specific number, a chart accompanying his remarks suggested the Fed’s policy rate could rise to a range between 5% and 7%. 

The Fed this month raised its target rate to a range of 3.75% to 4%.

“A lot of the market’s rally over the past week has been on expectations that the Fed will imminently pivot,” said Edward Park, chief investment officer at Brooks Macdonald. “The Fed has made clear it won’t do that.”

Nonetheless, Park said that “if inflation starts to fade, the Fed will back off…. We just need a bit of time to work out if inflation has truly peaked, or whether the November figure, like the July number, is not truly reflective of the broader trend.”

ASX SMALL CAP WINNERS

Here are the best performing ASX small cap stocks for November 18 [intraday]:

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

In the lead today was WA1 Resources (ASX:WA1) who’re raising $10m via a placement at $2 per share, a 13% premium to the last closing price.

This is the first time the explorer has traded on the ASX since announcing a second niobium-REE discovery at the West Arunta project earlier this week.

“Funds raised from the placement will primarily be applied to a substantial drilling program at our West Arunta Project which will focus on determining the depth and lateral extent of the carbonatite intrusions intersected at Luni and P2,” MD Paul Savich said.

“We are also now funded to test more priority targets in the next round of drilling.” 

Estrella Resources (ASX:ESR)  inked an ore processing and offtake deal with Glenore’s Murrin Murrin Operations for a bulk metallurgical sample (2,000 to 4,000 tonnes) from ESR’s 5A nickel mine in WA.

The company said a positive process outcome for the bulk metallurgical sample via the Murrin Murrin HPAL route will provide the company with a strong basis to fully develop the 5A nickel mine ore resource via simple pit cut back mining methods and further develop remaining nickel resources at Andrews, 5B and 1A nickel deposits. 

And while the commercial terms for the sale of the bulk metallurgical sample are confidential, ESR “expects it will see a positive financial return from the extraction of the sample at current high nickel prices”.

And Chase Mining (ASX:CML) wrapped up the Green Critical Minerals Pty Limited acquisition, which has the right to acquire up to 80% of the graphite rights for the advanced McIntosh Graphite Project – the third largest ASX listed graphite project in Australia. 

ASX SMALL CAP LOSERS