Another day, another massively embarrassing hack – and this time, it’s the British Army that’s been caught with their trousers down.

Both the British Army’s Twitter and YouTube accounts were breached harder than the peace of a Sunday morning when your neighbour Kevin wants to try out his new leafblower at 7am.

It’s quite a surprising hack, considering how security conscious the British Army is and how highly-prized that sort of asset would be as a platform for making some proper, heavy-duty political protest.

Far more effective than – for example – running onto a Formula 1 track mid-race, ready to prove a point about climate change through the simple expedient of being turned into a cloud of pink mist by a high-speed Ferrari-piloting Spaniard.

Anyhow – after spending countless hours listening to terrible cyberwave music and steadfastly refusing to shower, the hackers gained control of the accounts, and got to work spreading their message to the world.

The group made a powerfully important statement about the pointless and grossly obscene inhumanity of war, calling for the working class to rise up, seize the reins of power from the uber-wealthy political elite and smash the military-industrial complex.

Just kidding – they pumped an NFT scam. Because, of course they did:

We are, evidently, doomed as a species. Pic via Twitter, the spiritual home of evidence suggesting we are, seriously, doomed as a species.

 

TO MARKETS

The Aussie market has hit the ground running today, kicking off the week with a hard-charging 1.30% gain as we charge hard towards the buffet for lunch.

Across the sectors, and everyone’s got their snouts in the trough to varying degrees, with Real Estate (+2.8%), Health Care (+2.1%) and Energy (2.3%) all goosing the gas pedal as the morning progressed.

In terms of winners, it’s the little guys making the most waves this morning, so we’ll get to them in a bit – but it’s worth mentioning up the top here that today it’s the turn of Celsius Resources (ASX:CLA) to hit boiling point.

A resoundingly positive 611.4m @ 1.39% copper and 0.75g/t gold strike at its MCB Copper-Gold Project in the Philippines has prompted a surge of interest from investors, with the company’s price headed skyward to the tune of nearly 43%.

However, at the top end of town, there are a couple of big names reaching for the red ink and wishing the phones would stop ringing.

Magellan Financial Group (ASX:MFG) has dropped about 4.0% this morning on no particularly obvious news, while Grange Resources (ASX:GRR) no doubt had investors growling as it continued the slide it began on June 29, also sinking by around 4.0%. Grr indeed.

 

NOT THE ASX

A quick look overseas, and there’s no news from the US (and won’t be until Wednesday), because it’s the 4th of July long weekend. The vast quantities of smoke generated by the traditional burning of hot dogs creates a hostile work environment for traders, forcing Wall Street to close.

No such luck for Asian markets, where Japan is enjoying a nice start to the week by adding 0.9% throughout the morning, while Hong Kong markets have dropped roughly the same amount and Shanghai stayed neutral.

To commodities, where oil has slipped (-0.34%), gas deflated (-0.73%) and copper stayed flatter than a piece of horrifying 1970s wall art.

However, gold and silver continued to shine, adding 0.5% and 0.6% respectively.

 

ASX SMALL CAP WINNERS

Here are the best performing ASX small cap stocks for July 4 [intraday]:

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Outside of the penny dreadfuls, and it’s a couple of Health sector stocks making the news this morning.

Dimerix (ASX:DXB), after its DMX-700 treatment for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease showed great promise when tested on the tiny little lungs of some highly unfortunate mice.

The market liked the results – an 80% reduction in lung injury – and threw enough money at DXB to push its price up 20%.

And Volpara Health Technologies (ASX:VHT) has signed of a new 42-month contract with RadRet – the raddest net in the exciting field of medical records management – pushing it’s price up more than 19%.

 

ASX SMALL CAP LOSERS

Here are the worst performing ASX small cap stocks for July 4 [intraday]:

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