ASX Small Caps Weekly Form Guide

• Your end-of-week wrap covering small-cap movers (and occasional shake-outs) on the ASX
• Goldies and rare earths players lit up the bourse-based week just passed
• Expert panellist John Forwood chimes in with three stock picks to keep an eye on

Closing out on Friday August 22, the working week at the local stocks tracks (ASX 200 benchmark XJR: +0.31%; ASX Small Ordinaries XSO: +0.72%) went something like this…

The field burst out the gates on Monday, with the ASX 200 setting a 17th record high for 2025. Things were looking strong as we rounded the first turn, with broad sector gains led by telcos and tech.

But, yeahnah… we were mugged on Tuesday as biotech heavyweight CSL copped its worst single-day losses in decades, bringing the entire day down.

Onto the backstretch, Wednesday, and while CSL still bled out and James Hardie crumbled, the pack picked up the pace again overall, closing the day out with a solid 0.25% gain.

On the far turn and into the homestretch, Thursday thundered along like Hobbit-squashing dark riders. ASX all-time highs were smashed, stocks soared, women swooned and gods were created. Not a bad way to spend the day.

Friday… the ASX was running out of puff with the finish line in sight. And with Fed chair Jerome Powell’s looming Jackson Hole speech keeping fingernails chewed and bums on (toilet) seats, the fate of the entire financial world still felt very much in the balance.

Tips Trifecta

Every week in this section we flick through our Rolodex (yep, we’re old school) of analytical experts to grab their top three ‘buy’ picks for the trading week ahead.

This week…

Lowell Resources Fund chief investment officer John Forwood recommends:

Piche Resources (ASX:PR2)

Price: 14c

MC: $11m

Who are they?
Piche owns the Cerro Chacon gold project in Argentina’s Chubut province. Run by new MD Karilyn Farmer (ex McKinsey, Newmont and Areva) and John ‘Gus’ Simpson (ex-Peninsula Energy), the company also holds highly prospective uranium exploration licences in Argentina and WA.

The upside

Drilling is scheduled for early September. Roads have been completed and drill pads have been constructed. Chacon hosts a 14km mineralised corridor where surface assays up to 11g/t gold and 200g/t silver have been returned on a previously undrilled epithermal system. Chubut Province remains against open pit mining and the use of cyanide for gold treatment. However, there are ongoing efforts to modify the law, giving Piche huge upside to a regulatory win.

Leeuwin Metals (ASX:LM1)

Price: 14c

MC: $15m

Who are they?

Run by geologist Chris Piggott with $1.2bn-capped Predictive Discovery’s Simon Jackson as a director. Flagship asset, the Marda Gold project north of Southern Cross in WA, was acquired in early 2025.

The upside

Marda was recently mined by vendor Ramelius Resources, but has plenty of mineralisation left behind. Initial drilling by LM1 under the Marda Central pit included highlights of 5m at 5g/t Au and 10m at 2.3g/t Au. Eleven new trends have been identified with mineralised rock chips and historical workings, with more drilling planned.

Alchemy Resources (ASX:ALY)

Price: 0.6c
MC: $6m

Who are they?
Run by geologist/broker James Wilson as MD, formerly with Argonaut, and experienced chairman Lindsay Dudfield. Drilling is underway in NSW while in WA the company has a portfolio of catalyst-rich exploration projects.

The upside

Alchemy has an undrilled iron ore prospect 550km from Geraldton with rock chips up to 65% Fe (drilling program of works approved), and a 20% interest in Catalyst Metals’ Wilgeena Au deposit, potentially truckable to its Plutonic mill. The imminent catalyst is the drilling at Yellow Mountain in the Cobar Basin of NSW, which has taken five years to approve. Results from 1978 included 25m at 1% Cu (plus Au-Ag-Pb-Zn) within a 500m strike of extensive historic mining.

In the Money

Kaili Dreamin’

ASX stocks don’t normally bounce up and down like an Elon Musk-backed memecoin. But the Aussie market had its DOGE moment as mysterious rare earths explorer Kaili Resources (ASX:KLR) surged close to 9000% in a day on Monday.

That followed an unexplained 500% run on the Friday before on the pedestrian news the SA government was letting it sink a handful of roadside drill holes.

At just 35c the ASX issued a speeding ticket and, perhaps against greater wisdom, let trade continue after a vanilla explanation from the runaway KLR. By late afternoon the pump hit a high of $3.18 before a plummet to $1.08 prompted a second pause.

The stock pulled back as low as 20c on Thursday, but in further crazy scenes, caught fire again on Friday, reaching as high as 82c again before it was halted in its tracks. All up a +13,566% gain for the week and a multi-million dollar windfall for chairman and new 60% owner Jianzhong Yang.

A third speeding ticket was posted Friday. ASIC and the ASX are, vaguely, looking into things. Goodie.

Gold, gold, gold for Ausgold

A $35 million deal to purchase 860Ha of freehold land key to Ausgold’s (ASX:AUC) Katanning gold project saw investors pile in this week. It clears a major hold up and ends a two year long warden’s court case, enabling drilling at the project’s key Central Zone resources.

$15m will be due before August 26, with another $20m payable on a final investment decision. A DFS, which is now being reviewed, suggested the mine would produce 1.14Moz over a decade, including 140,000ozpa in its first four years, and generate $1.37bn in post-tax cashflow over its life.

Perfect 10 for Vault

Up in large cap land, Vault Minerals (ASX:VAU) stunned investors on Thursday by announcing a 10% buyback, valued at ~$330m on its current market cap.

After generating a $237m profit in FY25 on rising gold prices and production from the King of the Hills gold mine in WA, it’ll be the first capital return in the history of the merged company, three years after a buyback run by its predecessor Silver Lake Resources.

Hot Stock of the Week

Waratah Minerals (ASX:WTM)

NSW gold-copper explorer Waratah Minerals was a stock well in focus at this year’s Diggers and Dealers forum held in Kalgoorlie earlier this month. And there’s a 120%-powered reason for that.

That’s about how much WTM has climbed over the past month, off the back of drilling success at its Spur gold and copper project in the East Lachlan region of NSW.

In early August, the company reported multiple zones of high-grade gold mineralisation extending the fast-emerging Spur gold corridor, with extensional drilling returning 208.7m at 1.17g/t from 514m, including 89m at 1.96 g/t gold including 38m at 3.61 g/t gold.

Off the back of those results, Waratah secured $30m in firm commitments – including strong demand from leading Aussie and North American institutions – to ramp up drilling. Three rigs are now on deck and plenty more exploration results are expected through the rest of the year.

Blue Ocean Equities analyst Carlos Crowley Vazquez holds a speculative buy rating for WTM, and has lifted his price target to $1.50, a fair jump from its trading price of 64 cents at close of trade on Thursday.

At Stockhead we tell it like it is. While Ausgold and Waratah Minerals are Stockhead advertisers, they did not sponsor this article. 

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