ASX Small Cap Lunch Wrap: Who’s feeling the cold today?

How good are those US cold snaps?

Not at all if you can’t pay your heating bill, which more Americans than ever can’t. The moratoriums on paying energy bills which were put in place last year are starting to expire, and it couldn’t come at a worse time.

The National Energy Assistance Directors Association estimated total unpaid electric bills would grow from $US10 billion in July to nearly $US24 billion by the end of 2020.

And right now, as those moratoriums come off and half the US (mainly Texas) is buried under an epic snowstorm, natural gas and propane prices are skyrocketing.

Fox4 Kansas claims, in some cases, prices are as much as 200 times higher than average. That seems like a lot.

“It certainly looks like a person’s natural gas bill or their electricity bill may double or triple for this month. It may cost as much to heat your house these past three days as it typically does in a month,” US Senator Roger Marshall said.

You’ll be toasty if you’re into energy stocks though. The US energy sector soared as much as 3% on Tuesday, with more snow forecast for the rest of the week.

That helped the Dow Jones index rose by 64 points or 0.2% to a record closing high, and oil prices hit near 13-month highs at US$ 63.35 a barrel, as severe cold weather shut down wells and oil refineries in Texas.

Life is harsh. But if you need a laugh at rich people’s expense, a US federal judge decided Citigroup isn’t getting back the half a billion dollars it accidentally paid to lenders of cosmetics maker Revlon.

In other news, Bitcoin briefly touched the $US50,000 mark and here in Australia, Victorians are being let out of their homes again.

On the ASX200 today, Domino’s consolidated its mark of being a +$100 share company that it reached yesterday after an impressive presentation that showed it booking $286 million half-on-half growth.

Westpac led a good day for the banks, up a solid 4.84% at lunch to $23.60.

Here are your small cap winners and losers to midday for February 17, 2021.

WINNERS

Here are the best performing ASX small cap stocks at 12pm Monday February 15:

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

Province has turned the corner after trying to whet investor’s appetites as a furniture assembly business (AssembleBay) and vanadium explorer (ScandiVanadium).

It’s just acquired the Gascoyne and HyEnergy projects in WA’s north-west — a veritable ‘grab bag’ of commodity opportunities – and yeah, PRL’s share price is up a solid 284 per cent today, to 10 cents.

Try, try again kids.

The other notable winner today was payments company Cirralto, which mooned to 20c after opening at 15.5c after yesterday’s 47 per cent gain to 10c, also on no news. Huh.

LOSERS

Here are the worst performing ASX small cap stocks at 12pm Monday February 15:

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

The biggest noteworthy loser was another BNPL player, Fatfish Group, which dropped with the sector broadly by 25 per cent to 20c. But that’s still more than double it opened at yesterday.