ASX stocks are tracking lower in Tuesday trade, following a rough session on Wall Street overnight which included a sharp selloff in the big tech names.

Social media was in the spotlight as Twitter and Snap fell by +5% while Facebook is in the wars. One high profile tech outfit that held its ground was Tesla, for which some more unusual news emerged this morning.

Bloomberg reported that overnight, a San Francisco jury ruled in favour of former Tesla employee Owen Diaz, who took the carmaker to court on grounds he was subjected to a racially hostile work environment.

Tesla usually attempts nips its employee complaints in the bud with mediation proceedings, but this one made it all the way to court. And with his victory, the company now owes Diaz a US$137m (~$190m) payout.

By our calculations, that adds up to around 175,000 Tesla shares.

(The verdict “couldn’t immediately be confirmed in electronic court records”, Bloomberg added).

Elsewhere in the Life of Elon, the Tesla founder’s baby mama (and now ex-partner) gave meme-makers some easy content fodder with a carefully coordinated paparazzi stroll on the weekend, fully equipped with bizarro space-suit and a copy of The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx…

On markets, the ASX is following in the footsteps of Wall Street with some fairly sustained selling across the board.

Just after midday, the ASX 200 was down by around 0.95% with heavier falls in small caps, with the microcap Emerging Companies index down more than 2%.

Leading the laggards was the ASX 200 Information Technology index, which slumped by ~3.5% with heavy falls for BNPL leader Afterpay (ASX:APT).

Once again ASX energy stocks provided the only bright spot, as money continues to move into oil & gas with Brent crude prices consolidating above US$80/barrel.

Gold stocks are also outperforming while Bitcoin climbed back past the $US49,000 mark.

ASX SMALL CAP WINNERS

Here are the best performing ASX small cap stocks for October 5 [intraday]:

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Among stocks with announcements, Australian Dairy Nutritionals Group (ASX:AHF) rose strongly after the company announced that all of its farms are now “certified organic following the 3-year conversion program commenced in 2018”.

Also on the winner’s list was data security and analytics firm IXUP (ASX:IXU) after signing a collaboration agreement that gives it access to the US gaming and wagering market.

Get Stockhead’s daily rundown of all the big resources movers here.

ASX SMALL CAP LOSERS

Here are the worst performing ASX small cap stocks for October 5 [intraday]:

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

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