"Most people don't know this, but it's only these tattoos that are holding my skin together,", Father said. Pic via Getty Images.
ASX Small Caps Lunch Wrap: Anyone else feeling like they’ve heard this story somewhere before?
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Local markets opened lower this morning, because – frankly – we all got very lucky yesterday afternoon with the RBA’s short-term rate rise stay of execution, and since the banks aren’t getting their pound of flesh from that particular revenue stream for the month, we’re all expected to cough up a few bob elsewhere instead.
Still, the inflation bugbear is still stalking the market (and consumers) today, hanging over everything like the kind of bad smell left behind by a damp blanket in the boot of a car.
But… it could be worse, and we could all be living in Japan, because residents there are positively bricking it on news that the International Atomic Energy Agency has teamed up with the Japanese government to produce an alarmingly slender report giving the green light to dumping waste water from the Fukushima nuclear plant into the ocean.
Yes, the water has apparently been “treated” – four scoops of pool chlorine for clarity and some lovely citrus-based essential oils to mask the smell of mutating genetic material – but surely this is anything but a good idea.
The Giant Radioactive Lizard headlines are most likely already being prepped for when the waste water works its gruesome black magic on the coastline’s already heavily irradiated marine life.
And the updated live-action Godzilla film that we were promised what seems like ages ago is now looking increasingly likely to arrive in the form of a 10-episode, 48-hour long Ken “Radiation” Burns documentary.
But, in its infinite wisdom, the International Atomic Energy Agency has issued a “yeah, mate – she’ll be right” for Japan to dump the heavily-damaged reactor’s wastewater into the sea because the plan is “consistent with relevant international safety standards”.
Plus it will also align with Japan’s “efforts” to reduce the number of whales it murders every year, on the basis that four enormous, grotesquely mutated cetaceans will easily take the place of 20 of their more nimble, realistically sized (and shaped) non-mutant counterparts.
Plus, the meat comes pre-microwaved, so everybody wins.
TO MARKETS
If the market’s movements today were a novel, I wouldn’t be rushing out to snap up the movie rights – mostly because the world’s not ready for a four-hour Andrei Tarkovsky-directed slow-moving snoozefest, but also because Trading Places is, and always will be, the best stock market movie of all time.
Yes, even better than The Big Short. Fight me.
As we hit lunchtime, the benchmark was down just enough to garner a few resigned sighs, at -0.23% or thereabouts.
It’s the Telcos leading the way this morning, up 0.98% followed by Utilities, which has edged up 0.5%. Real Estate is up a tedious 0.13%.
The rest of the sectors are struggling to make par on a difficult ASX course, thanks to blustery conditions on the back nine, bunkers deep enough to stop a Russian mutiny and greens so fast they’ve given up on climate change completely to instead focus on spinach-powered rocket ships to carry us all into the heart of the sun.
Financials are weighing heaviest on -0.72%, Health Care’s not much better on -0.62%, Energy’s down 0.52% and I’ve run out of desire to list any more than that.
There are no Large Cap winners to speak of, so instead we turn to the loser’s list, where the Great Australian Lemon (ASX:AMP) is down 5.5% this morning because it sucks.
There, I said it.
NOT THE ASX
If you’re nosing around for info on what happened on US markets overnight, I’m gonna have to ask you to come back tomorrow, because Wall Street was closed while the United States gathered to celebrate ditching the English Royal Family in favour of Firearms, Slavery and McDonald’s allll the way back in 1776.
So, instead, a quick run-down of what happened on European markets instead reveals a very mild drop of 0.1% for London’s FTSE, while Germany’s DAX fell 0.26%, revealing just enough buttcrack to ensure that France’s CAC went everywhere. Gross.
In commodities, Crude oil prices rose almost 2% overnight, with WTI trading at US$71.05 a barrel, rallying after oil traders weighed August supply cuts by top exporters Saudi Arabia and Russia against a weak global economic outlook, and declared oil the winner on the day.
“Investors are turning upbeat as the second half of the year kicks off; they expect tighter oil balance and buoyant equities also suggest that recession will be avoided, albeit probably narrowly,” said PVM analyst Tamas Varga.
Elsewhere, as Earlybird Eddy reported this morning, gold ticked modestly higher by 0.25% to US$1,926.30 an ounce, after the shiny stuff was propped up over the past few days by the inverse spread between the 2-year and 10-year US Treasury note yields, which has hit the widest since 1981.
A negative spread is usually a leading indicator of a recession. A positive spread is Vegemite. (Ed: Lemon says hi.)
In Japan this morning, the Nikkei is down 0.41% because of the whole radioactive water thing, China’s Shanghai markets are slightly worse on -0.43% and Hong Kong markets are even more slightly worse, down 1.23% in early trade.
On the crypto desk, the news is that “it’s actually been a pretty decent 2023 so far” for completely pretend, GPU-frying digi-dollars.
Rob “Mr Hot Chips’ Badman points out that while the likes of Bitcoin have seen their fair share of ups and downs in the past six months, a broader overview of the market since New Year’s reveals that BTC has managed to bank two green quarters.
I am – quite genuinely – as shocked as Rob isn’t.
You can find him looking quietly smug over at Mooners and Shakers this morning, but you might wanna hurry – I give it 20-30 minutes (max) before his own personal index slips from Greed back down to Outright Fear, because that’s the way our Rob likes to roll.
ASX SMALL CAP WINNERS
Here are the best performing ASX small cap stocks for July 5 [intraday]:
Swipe or scroll to reveal full table. Click headings to sort:
Code Company Price % Volume Market Cap KTA Krakatoa Resources 0.047 104% 83,095,943 $8,357,661 MRQ Mrg Metals Limited 0.003 50% 333,333 $3,971,837 SBR Sabre Resources 0.045 41% 4,158,250 $9,327,558 ANR Anatara Ls Ltd 0.039 39% 226,300 $3,357,872 ACR Acrux Limited 0.061 36% 945,532 $12,967,896 CAV Carnavale Resources 0.004 33% 61,964,867 $8,200,655 GTR Gti Energy Ltd 0.008 33% 19,660,509 $11,686,525 VAL Valor Resources Ltd 0.004 33% 17,627,198 $11,409,104 MTB Mount Burgess Mining 0.005 25% 53,488,494 $3,532,684 MTH Mithril Resources 0.0025 25% 333,333 $6,737,609 MXC MGC Pharmaceuticals 0.005 25% 3,845,958 $13,402,772 ICL Iceni Gold 0.092 23% 328,616 $15,642,857 IBG Ironbark Zinc Ltd 0.011 22% 8,572,085 $13,201,058 MRR Minrex Resources Ltd 0.017 21% 7,541,358 $15,188,145 TSI Top Shelf 0.175 21% 211,751 $12,204,582 NES Nelson Resources 0.006 20% 3,400,000 $2,942,972 YPB YPB Group Ltd 0.003 20% 398,757 $1,858,654 LVT Livetiles Limited 0.013 18% 90,000 $11,518,823 EDE Eden Inv Ltd 0.0035 17% 37,883 $8,990,833 PIL Peppermint Inv Ltd 0.007 17% 769,954 $12,227,141 PVS Pivotal Systems 0.007 17% 487,830 $4,610,276 PCL Pancontinental Energy 0.015 15% 23,912,761 $104,704,897 BTE Botalaenergyltd 0.115 15% 123,753 $5,331,667 MBK Metal Bank Ltd 0.023 15% 5,000 $5,529,710 KAI Kairos Minerals Ltd 0.031 15% 14,756,636 $58,970,524
Leading the Small Caps today is a lithium boom heard round the world, thanks to Krakatoa Resources (ASX:KTA) hitting peak assays of 4.3% Li2O, 1.7% Rb2O, and 0.5% Cs2O at its post-pivot King Tamba project, 80 clicks NW of Magnet Mountain in WA.
While it’s important to bear in mind these are rock chip assay results – loads better than Portable XRF voodoo readings, way less reliable than proper holes in the ground – still, the news was enough to have investors piling on and driving Krakatoa’s price up 108% by lunch.
Next best is Sabre Resources (ASX:SBR), which is up 40-ish per cent this morning, after the company found an “extensive new sulphide zone has been discovered within a major electromagnetic (EM) target south-west of the Discovery sulphide resource zone at the Sherlock Bay nickel sulphide project in the highly-prospective Pilbara region of WA”.
Sabre, which drilled some actual holes (four of them, to be precise) and then thrust an electromagnetic probe into them, says all the holes (again, four of them, to be precise) returned EM readings indicating that the new sulphide discovery extends for a strike-length of at least 500m and is open in all directions (except, presumably, up), with other exceptionally strong off-hole DHEM conductors yet to be tested.
There’s a Health techie moving more mysteriously than Radiohead’s Thom Yorke this morning – namely, Anatara Lifesciences (ASX:ANR), which is up roughly 40% on razor thin volume and no news since its GaRP Irritable Bowel Test proved to be far too irritable and gave everyone the runs in June.
To assist in understanding that reference, here is Thom Yorke dancing like someone packed Midnight Oil Frontman and Massive Political Sell-out Peter Garrett full of Xanax and Merlot.
And Acrux (ASX:ACR) is up 33% on modest volume, after managing to put out an announcement with the magic phrase “accepted by the FDA” in the heading, which – as everyone who bore witness to Lumos Diagnostics’ (ASX:LDX) +1,100-and-then-some gains from earlier in the week will attest – can be quite useful in generating strong interest.
While we’re on the topic of Lumos, it’s defo worth mentioning that there’s been a sizeable chunk of profit-taking for the ASX’s latest Doogie Howser health stock – it’s down 33% today, taking its weekly gain to a comparatively piss-poor +707.6%.
Likewise, Atomo Diagnostics (ASX:AT1), which also took off earlier in the week, has given back closer to 15% of its gains this morning – but I’m happy to be able to report why it went flying when Lumos did.
Turns out, the Lumos “Is it Covid, Sars or mushrooms?” test that got FDA approval and gave everyone holding its stock a severe nosebleed from the sudden change in altitude works by using an Atomo’s patented “user friendly integrated Pascal test platform”.
So, now you know.
ASX SMALL CAP LOSERS
Here are the most-worst performing ASX small cap stocks for July 04 [intraday]:
Swipe or scroll to reveal full table. Click headings to sort:
Code Company Price % Volume Market Cap CCO The Calmer Co Int 0.002 -50% 3,477,820 $1,779,110 LDX Lumos Diagnostics 0.105 -32% 32,786,168 $47,960,112 SAN Sagalio Energy Ltd 0.009 -31% 37,536 $2,660,582 OSM Osmond Resources 0.14 -26% 24,176 $7,540,890 AUK Aumake Limited 0.003 -25% 446,784 $5,949,038 CLE Cyclone Metals 0.0015 -25% 1,107,524 $20,529,010 NZS New Zealand Coastal 0.002 -20% 18,227,392 $4,135,025 WFL Wellfully Limited 0.004 -20% 782,064 $2,464,721 EQS Equity Story Group 0.045 -18% 85,000 $2,233,814 MKL Mighty Kingdom Ltd 0.014 -18% 4,225,167 $5,545,733 MRL Mayur Resources Ltd 0.17 -17% 114,567 $63,926,025 MOH Moho Resources 0.011 -15% 285,185 $3,374,511 CHW Chilwa Minerals 0.17 -15% 317,539 $9,175,000 ID8 Identitii Limited 0.023 -15% 371,253 $5,745,558 AT1 Atomo Diagnostics 0.071 -14% 11,090,837 $47,383,952 AVM Advance Metals Ltd 0.006 -14% 147,150 $4,119,911 OAR OAR Resources Ltd 0.003 -14% 517,396 $8,998,633 TTI Traffic Technologies 0.012 -14% 82,612 $10,607,383 LV1 Live Verdure Ltd 0.085 -14% 20,691 $8,391,147 ILT Iltani Resources Lim 0.2 -13% 184,965 $9,611,148 RDN Raiden Resources Ltd 0.007 -13% 684,596 $16,442,151 EQX Equatorial Res Ltd 0.145 -12% 5,555 $20,780,983 IMI Infinitymining 0.15 -12% 371,587 $13,001,314 INV Investsmart Group 0.15 -12% 96 $24,007,264 RCW Rightcrowd 0.03 -12% 1,123,396 $8,948,522
