ASX Small Cap Lunch Wrap: Who's in danger of a premature celebration today?

Following overnight strength in Europe and on Wall Street, the benchmark ASX200 is striding into lunch, buoyed by another strong showing from the tech stocks. The top 200 index is heading for a sixth straight positive session, not terribly shabby in volatile times.

The ASX Emerging Companies (XEC) index meanwhile, is tracking 0.2% higher at lunch.

The Federal Budget has been largely well-received by market participants. This morning both CommSec and UBS equity strategists maintained their bullish 7,700 points-by-Christmas-time forecasts.

CommSec is particularly taken about the combo of further stimulatory government spending, a low interest rate environment and the encouraging economic growth that the Treasurer Josh Fyrdenberg has been excited about.

CommSec senior economist Ryan Felsman says this’ll support Australian shares right through till Santa comes. There’s a long way to go, but the benchmark index is up 6% for the month.

More reticent was Barrenjoey’s chief equity strategist Damien Boey who reckons the budget is but a short-term positive for the consumer and not heaps more.

“It adds modestly to infrastructure and housing but does not change the outlook for the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) or rate-sensitive spending in 2023.”

Historically, consumer discretionary stocks tend to outperform when retail sales growth picks up, Boey says in a note to clients.

“Hence, we believe there is room for a tactical bounce on the back of budget relief measures. But if the RBA does hike broadly in line with money market pricing, we think that the longer-term outlook could be constrained.

“RBA forecasts suggest that even a few rate hikes are enough to cause real GDP growth to slow from a peak of 5% in 2022 to 2% in 2023 — a rather large and negative delta.”

On the local bourse at lunchtime, the IT names are leading broad market gains. Healthcare, financial stocks, industrials and the consumer discretionary sectors are all outperforming. Despite gains for iron ore, Brent and West Texas, both the energy and materials are the lunchtime laggards.

ASX SMALL CAP WINNERS

Here are the best performing ASX small cap stocks for March 30 [intraday]:

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Code	Company	Price	%	Market Cap
CPO	Culpeominerals	0.325	160%	$5,499,642
TSN	The Sust Nutri Grp	0.155	29%	$14,472,766
LRS	Latin Resources Ltd	0.096	26%	$113,842,103
ANL	Amani Gold Ltd	0.0025	25%	$45,886,882
MPG	Manypeaksgoldlimited	0.36	24%	$9,309,580
VGI	VGI Partners Limited	4.4	24%	$248,509,962
CMO	Cosmometalslimited	0.175	21%	$3,698,950
FLC	Fluence Corporation	0.24	20%	$124,970,807
MCM	Mc Mining Ltd	0.12	20%	$15,441,956
AFW	Applyflow Limited	0.003	20%	$7,394,020
EMUCA	EMU NL - 3C Pd, 3C Unpd	0.006	20%	$202,425
PCL	Pancontinental Energ	0.006	20%	$35,771,114
SBR	Sabre Resources	0.006	20%	$10,174,068
TSO	Tesoro Resources Ltd	0.09	18%	$50,801,119
THR	Thor Mining PLC	0.0165	18%	$13,070,380
HOR	Horseshoe Metals Ltd	0.042	17%	$19,637,744
BUD	Buddy Tech	0.007	17%	$21,075,150
ODE	Odessa Minerals Ltd	0.014	17%	$6,445,813
TEM	Tempest Minerals	0.095	16%	$32,627,874
PKO	Peako Limited	0.022	16%	$5,860,628
CPV	Clearvue Technologie	0.415	15%	$76,226,524
CPM	Coopermetalslimited	0.47	15%	$11,078,200
360	Life360 Inc.	6.19	15%	$989,155,444
LCT	Living Cell Tech.	0.008	14%	$7,198,546
SLM	Solismineralsltd	0.24	14%	$7,575,342

Tesoro Resources (ASX: TSO) has nailed some ‘sensational’ intercepts – the best to date – from its flagship El Zorro gold project in Chile.

Diamond drill assays returned “multiple wide gold intercepts from high-grade, strike-extensive zones which remain open at depth and to the south.” Shares are climbing higher at lunch.

Firefinch (ASX:FFX) is up well over 11% as the goldie continues to add to its bounty around the Morila gold mine in Mali, securing a mining licence for its Finkola permit.

The conversion of the exploration licence will pave the way for mining to begin at the Beledjo-Koting deposit, the fourth satellite ore source for Firefinch to feed the Morila mill.

Beledjo-Koting contains an ore reserve of 20,000oz including 0.63Mt at 0.98g/t gold, with inferred and indicated resources of 0.93Mt at 1.01g/t for 30,000oz of gold.

But the unmined deposit is an important source of soft and easy to process oxide ore, meaning it can be blended with fresh rock from the recently reopened Morila Super Pit to improve processing efficiency.

Argenica Therapeutics (ASX: AGN) is up over 7% after the medtech said it received ‘positive results’ from a pre-clinical study of its flagship candidate ARG-007 treatment.

ASX SMALL CAP LOSERS

Here are the worst performing ASX small cap stocks for March 30 [intraday]:

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Code	Company	Price	%	Market Cap
88E	88 Energy Ltd	0.0165	-50%	$524,211,844
ALT	Analytica Limited	0.001	-33%	$6,920,702
REC	Rechargemetals	0.34	-25%	$14,825,038
CCE	Carnegie Cln Energy	0.002	-20%	$37,756,434
KFE	Kogi Iron Ltd	0.008	-20%	$13,175,778
GGX	Gas2Grid Limited	0.0025	-17%	$12,174,306
TML	Timah Resources Ltd	0.057	-16%	$6,235,211
MTB	Mount Burgess Mining	0.006	-14%	$5,314,198
CLB	Candy Club	0.1	-13%	$42,258,586
ABE	Ausbondexchange	0.375	-13%	$14,976,912
ATR	Astron Corp Ltd	0.57	-12%	$79,610,101
YBR	Yellow Brick Road	0.11	-12%	$40,570,408
VTI	Vision Tech Inc	0.625	-12%	$17,061,698
KNB	Koonenberrygold	0.097	-12%	$8,199,928
BOD	BOD Australia	0.155	-11%	$18,519,186
ARE	Argonaut Resources	0.004	-11%	$16,227,922
MEB	Medibio Limited	0.004	-11%	$10,786,456
MPP	Metro Perf.Glass Ltd	0.295	-11%	$61,174,768
ARO	Astro Resources NL	0.0045	-10%	$23,526,206
OEX	Oilex Ltd	0.0045	-10%	$35,838,954
POW	Protean Energy Ltd	0.009	-10%	$6,506,130
TPD	Talon Energy Ltd	0.009	-10%	$70,237,895
PNM	Pacific Nickel Mines	0.099	-10%	$29,840,344
FNT	Frontier Resources	0.029	-9%	$26,810,418
BKY	Berkeley Energia Ltd	0.535	-9%	$263,020,062