Local markets are putting on another decent show on Day 2 of an ANZAC Day shortened trading week.
The bigger moves are happening across both IT and Health companies, the former extending some really strong gains from Day 1.
Commodity prices including oil and gold are stuttering as traders pull out of safe-haven bets.
At around 1pm on Tuesday, the ASX200 was up by 26.40 points or 0.35% to 7,675.60.
Markets are up. A positive lead from Wall Street, where attention shifted to company earnings as worries over a wider Middle East conflict eased.
Investors are also cheering some solid PMI numbers here and in Japan for April, while treading water ahead of Indian PMI numbers later in the day.
Over the last five days, the index has gained 0.83% and is currently 3% off of its 52-week high.
But it seems putting the right price on something is getting harder.
Inflation they say is sticky, but tell that to Cocoa traders where prices are up over 200% this year.
Yet today, softer commodity prices are dragging on our resource-heavy bourse. Materials and mining and Industrial companies are the laggards this morning.
Gold fell more than 1% to around $US2,300 early this morning, that’s a near three-week low and the most since February last year after a goodly five-week rally.
Worries of more nonsense in the Middle East might be easing, leaving Wall Street et al to reckon with less of a safe-haven investment bent and towards a few riskier assets after Tehran laughed off Israel’s retaliation.
Gold’s also under pressure from the more aassertive Fedspeak out of the States.
Goldies of the major kind, like Northern Star Resources (ASX:NST) (down 4%), Evolution Energy Minerals (ASX:EV1) (down 3.5%) and Newmont Corporation (ASX:NEM) (down 3%) are all just terrible on Tuesday.
Coal miners Whitehaven Coal (ASX:WHC) and Yancoal Australia (ASX:YAL) were both under by significant margins.
Copper rallied towards $US10,000 a ton, hitting a new two-year high on its way.
Crude oil futures drifted lower in Monday trading on comments from the Iranian Foreign Minister, that Iran would not respond to the Israeli strikes on Friday last week. The WTI settled at $82.85 a barrel, with Brent closing at $87 a barrel.
Elsewhere, there was good news and bad news in the latest business update from one of the market’s more nutty companies, Select Harvests (ASX:SHV).
SHV MD David Surveyor reports that the 2024 (almond, they grow almonds) harvest started two weeks earlier than normal due to favourable growing conditions and the grower is now more than 95% through harvest shaking operations.
“Based on weighbridge and crack-out data to date we forecast the 2024 crop to be in the range of 28,500 MT and 30,000 MT – whilst potentially below our original forecast, it is on track to be one of the largest crops Select Harvests has ever produced.”
That’s the good news, the bad news is there’s a glut and prices for almonds are soooft.
Thus this morning’s -10% stock price dive.
Also enduring the lash of outrageous Tuesday morning fortune – Atlas Pearls (ASX:ATP), down an even more outrageous 35%.
Atlas says at the latest auction in Kobe, Japan it tried to flog some 104,000 pearls (pearls, the grow pearls).
But, unhappy with the lowballing bids, ATP “formed the view that the prices submitted did not reflect the true worth of the goods being offered.”
ATP says it therefore chose to accept bids for only 68,786 pearls at an average price of $68.60 per piece for total revenue of $4.66m.
“While this is below the unprecedented high of $112/piece achieved at the November 2023 auction, it was above the pricing of auctions prior to FY23.”
Pearl prices were too soooft. The stock has crashed more than a third.
ASX Sectors at Lunch on Tuesday
Both the Small Ords (XSO) and the XEC Emerging Companies indices were lower at lunchtime.
ASX Indices at Lunch on Tuesday
NOT THE ASX
Wall Street got back its groove overnight as these Middle East tensions eased and investors turned their attention to the release of big-ass tech company earnings.
Both the S&P500 and Nasdaq closed out their ugly six-day losing run.
The tech heavy Nasdaq reclaimed 1.1%. The S&P500 added 0.9%. The Dow Jones closed up 0.7%.
Corporately – AI mother-of-all Nvidia bounced back almost 5% after Friday’s sell-off.
Almost 30% of the S&P constituents are due to report results this week alone, but the attention is all Tesla, Meta, Microsoft and Alphabet.
On the inflation front this week US investors will be looking to GDP numbers due out on Thursday and a key inflation reading on Friday.
The Fed meets again April 30 to May 1, with officials now in the quiet period ahead of the meeting.
Last night, all the US Sectors ended higher with Tech out front adding 1.3%.
Materials was the worst, ending a little ahead of parity.
ASX SMALL CAP WINNERS
Here are the best performing ASX small cap stocks for 23 April [intraday]:
Swipe or scroll to reveal full table. Click headings to sort:
CODE COMPANY PRICE % TODAY VOLUME MARKET CAP OSX Osteopore Limited 0.485 194% 1,670,612 $1,704,234 FGLDD Frugl Group Limited 0.115 53% 1,800 $7,448,873 ORN Orion Minerals Ltd 0.024 33% 7,232,735 $105,233,124 AUG Augustus Minerals 0.038 27% 5,428,641 $2,561,100 CHW Chilwaminerals 0.4 25% 58,400 $14,680,000 KGD Kula Gold Limited 0.012 20% 7,488,280 $4,864,619 ZNO Zoono Group Ltd 0.06 18% 72,351 $10,899,927 JBY James Bay Minerals 0.21 17% 70,979 $5,877,900 L1M Lightning Minerals 0.105 17% 743,750 $3,800,256 H2G Greenhy2 Limited 0.007 17% 196,860 $2,512,535 OPL Opyl Limited 0.022 16% 3,347,589 $3,217,511 TSI Top Shelf 0.185 16% 23,531 $33,388,138 AXN Alliance Nickel Ltd 0.039 15% 241,866 $24,678,547 GTI Gratifii 0.008 14% 2,006,057 $11,284,315 PL3 Patagonia Lithium 0.12 14% 10,000 $5,158,493 QPM Queensland Pacific 0.05 14% 8,380,436 $88,551,774 CVR Cavalierresources 0.215 13% 23,000 $6,047,494 ENV Enova Mining Limited 0.018 13% 2,697,715 $15,326,870 HLX Helix Resources 0.0045 13% 903,546 $9,292,583 SVM Sovereign Metals 0.545 12% 342,352 $273,056,649 RCR Rincon 0.037 12% 7,528,376 $7,297,995 BUS Bubalusresources 0.14 12% 81,463 $4,021,709 SPN Sparc Tech Ltd 0.28 12% 221,180 $21,411,419 BM8 Battery Age Minerals 0.105 12% 26,577 $8,625,470 8CO 8Common Limited 0.04 11% 112,195 $8,067,417
Up over 120% in the first half hour of trade is the Australian-Singaporean regenerative medicine company Osteopore (ASX:OSX).
OSX popped big on news of the start of first-in-human clinical trials for knee preservation in Singapore, where the medtech specialises in “3D-printed biomimetic and bioresorbable” implants. Its first patient was treated for knee preservation with Heparan Sulphate 3 (HS3) and aXOpore via a High Tibial Osteotomy (HTO) at the National University Hospital (NUH), Singapore.”
The first-in-human clinical trials follow the signings of two non-binding term sheets on 14 April 2023 with Accelerate Technologies to commercialise groundbreaking technology that accelerates bone and tissue regeneration.
Augustus Minerals (ASX:AUG) is rocketing early after recent reconnaissance mapping and sampling at the Ti-Tree Project, 200km east of Carnarvon in Western Australia returned returned strong results.
The mapping, supported by 26 rock chip samples, identified two areas containing mineralised veins and historic workings. Tiberius, the northern target, comprises a quartz-sulphide vein system up to 3m wide and outcrops for over 200m. Rock chip sampling at Claudius returned strong copper mineralisation in an iron rich siliceous vein. Silver was consistently elevated (up to 86g/t) with associated gold anomalism to 0.68g/t.
And Battery Age Minerals (ASX:BM8) is up after exploration targeting began at its Bleiberg Zinc-Germanium Project in Austria. It announced “senior geologists” had returned from Austria, “where they successfully accessed, collated and digitised over 100 years of historic mining data from the Bleiberg Zinc-Lead-Germanium Mine”.
At time of its closure, the Bleiberg mine was the sixth largest producer of germanium globally and one of the largest outside of China.
“Although not historically produced at Bleiberg, gallium mineralisation has also been identified in the historical workings, with grades ranging between 90-110g/t,” the company said.
ASX SMALL CAP LOSERS
Here are the most-worst performing ASX small cap stocks for 23 April [intraday]:
Swipe or scroll to reveal full table. Click headings to sort:
Code Company Price % Volume Market Cap MRD Mount Ridley Mines 0.001 -50% 189,166 $15,569,766 ERL Empire Resources 0.002 -33% 5,000 $3,338,805 MCT Metalicity Limited 0.002 -33% 850,001 $13,455,161 MHC Manhattan Corp Ltd 0.002 -33% 6,000 $8,810,939 ME1 Melodiol Glb Health 0.0035 -30% 62,822,165 $2,690,966 ATP Atlas Pearls Ltd 0.125 -26% 6,573,078 $73,715,804 MTL Mantle Minerals Ltd 0.0015 -25% 1,107,353 $12,394,892 VIT Vitura Health Ltd 0.125 -22% 1,620,302 $92,139,806 GBZ GBM Rsources Ltd 0.012 -20% 1,295,617 $17,350,333 ADY Admiralty Resources. 0.005 -17% 111,360 $9,776,844 AS1 Asara Resources Ltd 0.01 -17% 1,302,030 $10,586,104 NTM Nt Minerals Limited 0.005 -17% 128,571 $5,159,417 OAU Ora Gold Limited 0.005 -17% 2,000,000 $34,836,005 PAA Pharmaust Limited 0.245 -16% 5,378,776 $114,553,964 LV1 Live Verdure Ltd 0.7 -15% 151,383 $102,065,217 1TT Thrive Tribe Tech 0.017 -15% 3,000 $5,932,430 1MC Morella Corporation 0.003 -14% 360,033 $21,625,798 CDT Castle Minerals 0.006 -14% 25,001 $8,571,451 FTZ Fertoz Ltd 0.03 -14% 524,983 $8,758,711 POS Poseidon Nick Ltd 0.006 -14% 7,335,861 $25,994,743 SI6 SI6 Metals Limited 0.003 -14% 45,000 $8,291,008 K2F K2Fly Ltd 0.081 -14% 93,518 $17,571,156 SNS Sensen Networks Ltd 0.025 -14% 128,998 $22,463,503 EE1 Earths Energy Ltd 0.013 -13% 57,147 $7,949,463 TSO Tesoro Gold Ltd 0.034 -13% 1,288,204 $47,953,648
ICYMI – AM EDITION
Australian Mines (ASX:AUZ) has started Phase 3 exploration at its Jequie REE and niobium project in Brazil’s well endowed Bahia state close to the 510Mt Rocha de Rocha REE project.
The work consists of detailed geological mapping, rock chip sampling, stream sediment sampling and grid soil sampling to identify priority targets ahead of maiden drilling.
Targets were prioritised based on enhanced measured outcrop radioactivity associated with favourable host rock lithologies that were also coincident with elevated airborne thorium anomalies.
Ora Banda Mining (ASX:OBM) has completed the farm-out of its non-gold mineral rights at its Davyhurst tenement package, 100km northwest of Kalgoorlie, to Wesfarmers (ASX:WES).
The company will receive $4.29m on 30 April, at which point it has received the full $26 million cash consideration due under the transaction. It will also receive a 2% net smelter royalty for all other minerals.
It will receive a further $4m from Hawkes Point for effectively on selling 1.5% of the 2% royalty.
At Stockhead, we tell it like it is. While Australian Mines and Ora Banda Mining are Stockhead advertiser, they did not sponsor this article.