ASX Small Caps Lunch Wrap: Who else is pondering their decision-making today?

In a grimly hilarious case of “face, meet palm”, a garbage-tier football club in England has made an embarrassing blunder after inking a deal to rename one of the grandstands at its home ground.

Southend United was super-proud to announce a new sponsorship deal with local real estate agent Gilbert and Rose, which included naming rights of the stand, formerly known as The West Stand because, presumably, it’s on the western side of the pitch.

There was a collective gasp of horror, however, when the Gilbert and Rose West Stand was revealed, when fans realised that their beloved terrible football club had inadvertently renamed it after one of the most hated serial killers in England’s long, loooong history.

Rose West quite infamously tortured and murdered at least nine women between 1973 and 1987, including her eight-year-old stepdaughter, with her husband Fred.

It could go down in British history as one of the worst rebrandings in British history – and that includes Britain’s failed attempt to re-brand “Boris Johnson” as “Prime Minister”.

But as foul as the crimes committed by the club grandstand’s namesake were, they quite probably pale in comparison to the unrelenting horror of being a Southend supporter.

 

TO MARKETS

Aussie markets stumbled on the way out of the blocks this morning, before recovering and hitting their stride – the 5-point dip at open was converted to a 5-point gain in the space of just 15 minutes, and the benchmark is loping towards a 0.4% gain before lunch.

It’s Materials (+1.44%) leading the charge so far, The Consumers appear to have settled their differences to move in lock-step, with Discretionary (+0.86%) slightly ahead of Staples (+0.84%), and the Health sector has popped on its best saucy nurse outfit, up 0.69%.

In more upsetting news, it looks like the Energy sector has all but lost the will to live, down for a fifth straight day, this time by -2.03%. A few more days of this and we’ll definitely have to call the vet, and possibly have it put out of its misery.

Among the Big Caps, and De Grey Mining (ASX:DEG) has jumped 7.0% because gold is shiny and they’ve got mountains of it, and Pointsbet (ASX:PBH) continued its post-quarterly climb, up 8.5%.

The morning’s Large Caps trophy goes to Novonix (ASX:NVX), which appears to have picked up an 11.3% boost from proposed changes to US plans for tax credits on EVs, which would see American-made vehicles and components favoured heavily over their Chinese counterparts.

But it’s sad faces over at Block Inc (ASX:SQ2), after its weeks-long $26 surge came to an abrupt -5.5% end this morning, after it announced to Wall Street that its Q2 payments volume ($US52.5 billion) missed estimates ($US53.47 billion).

This is in line with the absolutely-not-real Block Inc Investor Happiness Index, which reported that its current value (Pretty Unhappy) also missed estimates (Party Time).

As always, let’s have a peek at overseas markets before we issue warm rounds of applause for some truly outrageous movement among the Small Caps.

 

NOT THE ASX

As is fast becoming tradition, we’re leaning on the good graces and excellent reporting of Early Morning Eddy, who tells us that US stocks were mixed as the S&P 500 finished flat, while the Dow fell 0.26% and tech-heavy Nasdaq rose by 0.41%.

Wall Street continues to ignore the deepest yield curve inversion since the early 2000s, and the S&P 500 index has now rebounded over 13% from the June lows. The Nasdaq is also up by more than 12% since a month ago.

Meanwhile, the Bank of England (BOE) has jumped on the interest rate hike bandwagon, slapping the Brits in the face with a 50 basis points kipper, before adjusting its bowler hat and demanding fresh tea.

It’s the steepest increase in 27 years, taking the UK cash rate to 1.75% amid BOE’s dire warnings that the UK might enter its longest recession since the financial crisis of 2008-09, saying the British economy is set to shrink for five consecutive quarters beginning in Q4 this year.

In Asia, markets are as well-mixed as my mate Vince’s special Driveway Blend concrete, with Japan’s Nikkei up a thrilling +0.69%, and Hong Kong shares lagging, down -0.24%.

Shanghai shares, however, are flat this morning, most likely because China needed somewhere horizontal to land all the fighter jets it sent zooming over Taiwan in a bid to scare Nancy Pelosi into spitting her dentures into her breakfast congee.

Over at the Department of Commodities, everyone’s got silly grins on their faces.

Oil is up 0.4%, natural gas is up 0.7%, gold is hangin’ in there, up 0.02%, silver’s up a spoon-worthy 0.4% and copper is 1.32% higher as lunchtime looms.

 

ASX SMALL CAP WINNERS

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

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

WordPress Table
Peregrine Gold (ASX:PGD), step up and take a bow – the company has reported a mouth-watering gold find at its greenfield Peninsula Prospect, complete with photos that show an enormous vein of gold-bearing quartz-ironstone breccia, sitting at surface.

Like, you can reach down and touch the gold, just sitting there waiting to make somebody very, very rich.

Peregrine broke out a hand-held drill to take core samples, and they are genuinely spectacular – so much so that we’ve “borrowed” a photo so you can see for yourself.

It’s completely unsurprising, then, that Peregrine’s price has gone through the roof, climbing 112% before lunch and showing no signs of slowing down.

ALso doing well were Incannex (ASX:IHL), up 24% following the successful completion of its acquisition of APIRx Pharmaceuticals, and Victory Goldfields (ASX:1VG), up 22.5% for the morning.

On the grim side of the ledger, Arafura’s (ASX:ARU) plunge continues, down 11.3% even as the company embarks on a $4.5m placement to raise capital.

 

ASX SMALL CAP LOSERS

Here are the most-worst performing ASX small cap stocks for August 5 [intraday]:

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

WordPress Table