Down down, turtles are down. Pic via Getty Images.
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Here in the Stockhead newsroom, where we frequently test the “1,000 monkeys, 1,000 typewriters” theory and have been known to bend the very fabric of space-time itself to meet deadlines tighter than a speleologist’s squeeze, there are a few honest and simple truths.
One of those is that we do love our miners – whether it’s our High-Vis Heroes digging colossal holes in the ground, or the energy-sapping enviro-crushers who’ve spent millions on crypto rigs large enough to brown out entire US states.
However, some of us harbour a secret (kind of), and that is a special kind of love for gaming. In particular, Minecraft.
Fine. It’s just one of us. It’s me.
Anyhow – a quick recap of the game, in case you’re not familiar with it: The world is made of cubes. Those cubes can be mined, and the contents collected. The contents can be used to make other things – usually very, very basic things.
But when you combine things, you can make better things. Bigger things, and a few years ago, someone figured out how to build a basic calculator, which was hellishly complicated.
But it gave rise to other ideas, and one fateful day – November 19, 2021. A Minecrafty fan left a comment on a YouTube video, saying: “One day we will have Minecraft in Minecraft.”
The challenge was set, and met, with a build so complex it took a team of people seven months to make it.
A computer, built in Minecraft, which is actually, genuinely able to run a copy of the game in which it’s been built – and here is video proof.
It is, frankly, astonishing, but it raises some interesting questions.
Humans have built computers capable of creating worlds in which we are now capable of creating worlds inside worlds, where does it end?
Is it evidence or – dare we say it – proof that we’re living in a simulation, as a certain lithium-powered go-kart building, pot-smoking, pop star-nailing billionaire has suggested?
Or maybe the apocryphal old woman who accosted noted Cosmologist William James in the late 1800s, with her challenging theory of the shape of the universe, got it right?
She insisted that James’ model of a sun-centric solar system was wrong, and instead backed the ancient Hindu myth of an Earth that rested upon the shoulders of four elephants, which in turn stood on the back of a giant turtle.
“But what does this second turtle stand on?” persisted James patiently.
To this, the little old lady crowed triumphantly: “It’s no use, Mr James — it’s turtles all the way down.”
We suspect the old lady was precisely on point – the possibility of an an infinite regression of Minecraft within Minecraft is very real.
Segue – all of the above is an accurate description of today’s ASX performance.
The ASX is having a shocker. Sorry for being so blunt, but it’s true – the benchmark started off poorly, quite possibly due to lack of adequate sleep and decent coffee, the two main ingredients of having a good day.
Markets opened with the benchmark at 6,826 after a lacklustre day on Tuesday, and has been in a slow, graceless decline all morning, down -1.29%.
Across the sectors, and today’s news lead has turned out to be surprisingly prescient for the Materials (-1.39%) and Energy (-2.42%) sectors, because it’s miners all the way down there, too.
(See what we did there? That’s clever stuff, that is. Now gimme my Walkley and let me go home.)
InfoTech (+0.07%) and Health Care (-0.05%) are paddling hard, but looking more like roasted ducks floating down the Yongding River than the happier, feathered variety.
Elsewhere, it’s just grim. Industrials (-1.22%), Real Estate (-1.06%), Utilities (-1.76%). You get the picture.
The closest we got to a Billionaire Winner today is Neometals (ASX:NMT) which has been on the up for a few days now, following a quarterly rebalance notice. It’s up 5.8 today, and 8.6% for the week.
Crying into their pimp cups this morning was Chalice Mining (ASX:CHN) which has fallen hard today (-10.0%) despite exciting news that seismic exploration shows the Gonneville Intrusion could extend down plunge to the northwest for ~1.6km and beyond.
Normally that would make people happy. This time, it hasn’t, proving once again that the market is a weird, fickle beast that simply can’t be tamed, no matter how many Executive Whip and Chair Combos we buy from Officeworks.
Let’s have a squiz and see how things are in other parts of the world.
On Wall Street, it’s all a bit crap as well, with the S&P (-0.41%), the Nasdaq (-0.74%) and the Dow (-0.55%) all terrible performers. There’s a common thread there, because British post-punk legends The The haven’t had a hit since the 80s. Lazy, lazy, lazy.
Eddy the Earlybird Sunarto tells us reports that a stronger than expected ISM services index for August left investors nervous that the US Fed may keep hiking rates to combat inflation.
The index, which measures the overall economic condition for the services sector, rose to a four-month high of 56.9 in August vs survey of 55.3.
Given that literally everyone with their hands on the levers has said that rates are going to keep rising, it’s not the boldest of predictions out of the US.
Asia is, once again, looking like an unlikely illicit three-way with the charts very much a mixed affair.
The Nikkei’s down (-0.95%), Hong Kong’s even worse (-1.17%) but for some really curious reason and against all of the macroeconomic news and reports, Chinese shares have risen +0.23%.
How very, very curious that is.
The commodities desk is looking about as happy as a Russian oil baron beside a large, open window, with oil prices down 1.42%.
And natural gas is down quite unexpectedly, as the European energy crisis looms ever larger.
On that note, there has been a darkly humorous development, after Russia declared that the crisis is entirely America’s fault, even as Gazprom is sitting with its hands literally on the lever keeping Russian gas from flowing west.
We’d laugh if it weren’t such a ludicrously dangerous situation – with winter approaching and no gas to heat homes, the forecast is grim, even for Australia.
Meanwhile, gold has dropped 0.36%, silver’s fallen 0.6% and copper is tracking nearby, down 0.58% so far today.
To Crypto Crypt, where wealth is ephemeral and fortunes go die, Rob “The Gravedigger” Badman has unearthed news that Bitcoin has plunged like a drunk into a freshly-dug hole, back under US$19,000.
Tons of other news about that, and more, in Movers & Shakers.
Here are the best performing ASX small cap stocks for September 7 [intraday]:
Swipe or scroll to reveal full table. Click headings to sort:
Code Company Price % Volume Market Cap JAV Javelin Minerals Ltd 0.0015 50% 1,000,000 $9,454,153 MRI Myrewardsinternation 0.062 27% 2,669,230 $7,853,824 IR1 Irismetals 1.595 23% 456,516 $79,131,000 CLE Cyclone Metals 0.003 20% 833,333 $15,291,842 MTH Mithril Resources 0.006 20% 548,333 $14,701,165 ROG Red Sky Energy. 0.006 20% 91,455,059 $26,511,136 SGQ St George Min Ltd 0.031 19% 8,887,072 $18,200,463 ASR Asra Minerals Ltd 0.019 19% 6,924,284 $23,428,185 LYK Lykosmetalslimited 0.175 17% 208,823 $9,360,000 MCM Mc Mining Ltd 0.35 17% 52,442 $59,296,461 NAE New Age Exploration 0.007 17% 821,864 $8,615,393 TMS Tennant Minerals Ltd 0.046 15% 58,713,300 $24,663,051 CTO Citigold Corp Ltd 0.008 14% 543,079 $19,835,614 SI6 SI6 Metals Limited 0.008 14% 98,803 $10,417,324 SW1 Swift Networks Group 0.017 13% 39,354 $8,702,219 FNX Finexia Financialgrp 0.08 13% 112,500 $11,509,604 EDE Eden Inv Ltd 0.009 13% 253,680 $20,689,824 EMP Emperor Energy Ltd 0.036 13% 1,122,854 $7,481,599 MMG Monger Gold Ltd 0.41 12% 187,860 $14,614,600 BOA Boadicea Resources 0.14 12% 70,394 $9,712,487 ICT Icollege Limited 0.195 11% 4,205,498 $191,692,176 CNJ Conico Ltd 0.049 11% 14,073,388 $64,018,597 BAT Battery Minerals Ltd 0.005 11% 2,300,200 $13,163,591 CUF Cufe Ltd 0.02 11% 50,000 $17,390,023 THR Thor Mining PLC 0.011 10% 779,894 $10,991,633
In Small Caps news, My Rewards International (ASX:MRI) has apparently finally amassed enough points to get its share price moving upwards, stacking on a powerful 25.5% this morning. If they’d waited a few months, those points could have been enough to get a $5 iTunes card.
And a coupe of miners are on a positive charge. Iris Metals (ASX:IR1) has jumped +19.2% on news that interpretation of high-resolution aeromagnetic survey data covering its newly acquired tenure at Kookynie has turned up very positive results.
And St George Mining (ASX:SGQ) has matched Iris point-for-point this morning, up +19.2% after mapping and rock chip sampling at Mt Alexander confirms numerous outcropping pegmatite dykes occurring in swarms which extend over 15km within the company’s tenements.
Hardest hit this morning is Aussie biohealth Neuroscientific Biopharmaceuticals, down -51.1% on bad news from its Phase I Clinical Trial for EmtinB.
NSB is hosting a webinar at 2:00pm EST to explain what’s going on. If you’re keen, you can find a link to it among the ASX announcements.
Here are the most-worst performing ASX small cap stocks for September 7 [intraday]:
Swipe or scroll to reveal full table. Click headings to sort:
Code Company Price % Volume Market Cap NSB Neuroscientific 0.115 -47% 3,150,235 30,846,403 CGA Contango Asset 0.3 -44% 1,470 26,031,180 MEB Medibio Limited 0.001 -33% 2,521,118 4,980,891 CVR Cavalierresources 0.15 -21% 16,900 5,773,920 AMT Allegra Orthopaedics 0.135 -21% 70,178 17,758,065 CFO Cfoam Limited 0.004 -20% 650,000 3,669,203 LNU Linius Tech Limited 0.004 -20% 2,277,144 11,569,332 HAS Hastings Tech Met 4.47 -18% 1,213,744 549,851,548 CPT Cipherpoint Limited 0.005 -17% 942,651 3,322,415 MM1 Midasmineralsltd 0.205 -16% 239,460 13,997,282 MEI Meteoric Resources 0.011 -15% 1,705,870 19,841,866 PRX Prodigy Gold NL 0.012 -14% 3,008,414 8,156,786 WECDA White Energy Company 0.25 -14% 7,896 11,764,444 C29 C29Metalslimited 0.13 -13% 17,608 4,500,094 CMX Chemxmaterials 0.165 -13% 150,000 8,904,564 MTM Mtmongerresources 0.135 -13% 46,083 5,814,055 AE1 Aerison 0.17 -13% 25,011 59,657,810 BXN Bioxyne Ltd 0.014 -13% 290,183 10,242,326 GTG Genetic Technologies 0.0035 -13% 20,634 36,935,861 HCT Holista CollTech Ltd 0.036 -12% 18,677 11,430,803 CZL Cons Zinc Ltd 0.022 -12% 513,760 9,683,945 BDG Black Dragon Gold 0.037 -12% 81,496 8,428,142 EMT Emetals Limited 0.0185 -12% 10,994,861 17,850,000 MFB My Food Bag Grp Ltd 0.6 -12% 9,359 164,857,516 MOB Mobilicom Ltd 0.015 -12% 3,500,757 22,631,754
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