• The ASX belts one out on Monday, up 0.8pc
  • All 11 sectors are better for it
  • Canterbury Resources grows by half

 

The benchmark Aussie index has started the week with decisive and broad based gains.

All 11 sectors ended Monday higher. US Futures are rising and almost every Asain-Pacific market is in the money.

At home on Monday, the S&P/ASX200 closed 61.50 points or 0.81% higher to 7,637.40.

 

Via ASX

It was a good day for business across Asian markets, trading under the seemingly secure cover of rising US Futures.

By mid-arvo in Sydney, futures tied to the S&P500 were up more than 0.31%.

Dow Jones Industrial Average futures were almost the same while the Nasdaq 100 futures advanced 0.4%.

While everyone’s a winner baby, that’s the truth, the local top 200’s best on field were Strike Energy (ASX:STX) and Boss Energy (ASX:BOE) , up 10% and 9% respectively.

For all its sound and fury since, the ASX200 remains all but unchanged over the last 12 months.

That said, the weightiest contribution came from that most enormous of local lenders – Commonwealth Bank (ASX:CBA), which added 1%, while the company which gave us Bunnings et al, Wesfarmers (ASX:WES), found 1.25%.

Together the two giants carry $265bn on Aussie market cap, which made climbing an easy prospect for the local index.

Other exciting moments moving the dial on Bridge St – the glamorous, global agribusiness giant Louis Dreyfus Company –  sadly not run and owned by Julia – made a sweet play for lovely Namoi Cotton (ASX:NAM)  smiting the rival bid from lesser glamour giant, Olam Group.

Julia says it’ll lob in an off-market takeover offer for the 83 per cent of Namoi it’s not already got, for 60c per share.

On the new metals front and despite having made something of a recent comeback, it’s apparently still too hard to make a dime in today’s nickel market… unless maybe you got a handful every time a West Aussie-based producer shut up shop…

This time it’s the C$11.5bn Canadian miner First Quantum Minerals, which said on Monday it’ll wind down processing at  Ravensthorpe after turning off the taps back mining in January because money.

On Friday, ASX gold-related stocks ended the week with a pop, the ASX All Ordinaries Gold (XGD) index surging by over 4%.

Today the spot price tracked below US$2,330 with the stronger and steadier greenback finally giving buyers something to temper their lust. That hasn’t chilled things down here too much with the XGD still finding more than 0.5%.

As did the broader ASX Materials sector.

Both Property and IT Sectors closed 1.7% higher.

A fine session’s effort.

 

ASX SECTORS ON MONDAY

 

 

And in the States …

There’s anticipation for Monday with the latest US PCE data dropping in line with expectations and unleashing mega tech inspired gains on Friday.

The macro meaning is that while there’s no immediate need for cuts, there’s also little urgency to raise.

In March, both the monthly key rate and core PCE rate rose by 0.3%, hitting market forecasts.

The recent economic data indicates that inflationary pressures are staying firm, with most investors still betting on the first interest rate cut in September.

The US Fed has its headline rates decision upcoming, wherein the Fed’s monetary policy crew are still largely expected to maintain the current policy rate range of 5.25%–5.5%.

On the corporate front, the hero of last week ended up being Google daddy company Alphabet, which joined a handful of rival tech megas which pump out dividends.

GOOGL’s is a US$0.20 cash divvy after also announcing a ginormous US$70bn  share buyback.

After dropping happy quarterly results –  driven by gains in search and hifalutin plans to be even more dominant in AI.

And it can. The company says it has about US$110 billion in cash waiting to be deployed

S&P 500 futures climbed on Monday morning as the broad index came off its best week in several months. Traders are looking ahead to a week with more corporate earnings, key labor data and a Federal Reserve meeting.

 

Via Fox

 

ASX SMALL CAP LEADERS

Today’s best performing small cap stocks:

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Way out in front on Monday is hitherto low flying copper prospect Canterbury Resources (ASX:CBY).

All that’s changed, probably because Stockhead’s Garimpeiro went looking last week for juniors in the copper porphyry space and got frothy when it came to a little thing he covered years ago

This arvo CBY is worth about double what it was at 10am.

Garimpiero says CBY’s closer to a Tier 1 copper-gold porphyry deposit.

“It has stuck to its task over the years and has some 1.8Mt of copper and 3.16M ounces of gold in resources spread across projects in Queensland and PNG, all of which are the subject of joint ventures with deep-pocket partners.”

No news, but up like a French flag on Bastille Day.

Rincon Resources (ASX:RCR)has jumped happily over 25% and is now up 220% over the past week as news of its recent uncovering of a ‘bullseye’ target at its project in the West Arunta region of WA continues to turn heads.

And that’s a target, dubbed Avalon, “of similar size and character” to WA1 Resources’ (ASX:WA1) Luni carbonatite, and IOCG (iron oxide copper-gold) deposits like Prominent Hill and Ernest Henry.

Our old lithium loving mates at Errawarra Resources (ASX:ERW) are back in the news, shining their shoes, kicking off the blues, ready to cruise, matching cows with moo’s and lighting another fuse after striking a deal with Alien Metals  (LSE:UFO) for a handy looking JV at Pinderi Hills located in the West Pilbara.

Executive Chairman Thomas Reddicliffe says the project comprises 175km2 of prospective ground which comprises both granted mining leases and exploration licences and  is located 25km to the southwest of Errawarra’s heroic Andover West.

He reckons the new JV makes Errawarra one of the largest exploration companies by area in the ‘world class lithium province.’

“The Pinderi Hills Project was highly sort after and has potential to host lithium pegmatites and is located to the southwest of Azure’s lithium project at Andover. Having identified and confirmed a large pegmatite swarm on the tenements we will be moving quickly to determine the lithium potential of these pegmatites by way of systematic mapping and sampling and we would hope this will lead to drill testing of the pegmatites that prove to be fertile.”

Also digging for dosh on Monday, is Aspire Mining (ASX:AKM) which has developing coking coal assets in Mongolia.

AKM says it’s been working through major permits and approvals required to begin mining at the flagship, 100% owned Ovoot project as it prepares updates to its JORC coking coal reserve estimates.

The final one of those important approvals has been ticked off the to-do list, as of Monday, AKM told the exchange today.

It’s a Detailed Environmental Impact Assessment (DEIA) for the construction of a public road from the Ovoot project, given the nod by the Professional Council of the Ministry of Nature, Environment and Tourism (MNET).

This will support product haulage from Ovoot and it represents a major milestone for Aspire as it’s the last of the major permits needed to progress development of the coking coal project.

Aspire can now get on with formal financing endeavours related to its flagship operation.

 

ASX SMALL CAP LAGGARDS

Today’s best performing small cap stocks:

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IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

AdAlta (ASX:1AD) has received institutional investments of $3m and $700,000 from New Life Sciences and Meurs Group respectively. Proceeds will be used to accelerate the recently announced partnerships with venture capital firm SYNthesis BioVentures Fund.

Airtasker (ASX:ART) has announced its second consecutive quarter of positive free cash flow. Free cash flow of $2.5m in Q3 FY2024 represents a $5.1m improvement over the previous corresponding period (pxp). Marketplace revenue up 11.5% pcp to $10.1m.

Arizona Lithium (ASX:AZL) has achieved steady lithium recovery rates averaging 95% from four months of processing brine from its Prairie project. Data from the pilot plant will be used to design the planned commercial direct lithium extraction plant.

Rock chip and talus sampling at Belararox’s (ASX:BRX) Toro-Malambo-Tambo project in Argentina has returned significant copper, gold and silver assays that are indicative of both porphyry-style and epithermal-type mineralisation.

Challenger Gold (ASX:CEL) has unexpectedly uncovered a large 5km long by 4km wide copper in soil anomaly at its low-cost Hualilan gold project in Argentina. The discovery was made while trialling an ionic leach geochemical technique designed to explore undercover across four 7.5km-long regional traverses.

CuFe (ASX:CUF) has identified nine target areas at its West Arunta acreage that have the potential to host niobium and rare earths. A land access agreement is also progressing with a decision likely in May.

Eagle Mountain (ASX:EM2) will soon acquire 3D seismic to provide a better understanding of the Silver Mountain project’s geology, which bears similarities to major porphyry systems nearby. It will also help delineate targets for future drilling programs.

Galan Lithium (ASX:GLN) has now produced 1000t of lithium carbonate equivalent through pond evaporation at its Hombre Muerto West (HMW) lithium-brine project in Argentina as it ramps up to Phase 1 production.

Kula Gold (ASX:KGD) is preparing to drill its Boomerang prospect close to the historical multimillion ounce Marvel Loch gold mine in WA. The anomaly is a cross cutting northeast structure in the vicinity of geochemistry results that contain a historical Kula RC hole that produced a significant result of 1m at 2.6g/t gold at 54m.

Lanthanein Resources’ (ASX:LNR) recent tenement-wide soil sampling program has uncovered multiple gold, copper and nickel anomalies at its Lady Grey project near Southern Cross, WA.

Parkway Corporate (ASX:PWN) has announced record revenue of $2.28m and EBITDA of $422,000 for Q3 FY2024 with recently acquired industrial engineering solutions provider Tankweld contributing revenue of $880,000 during this period.

Queensland Pacific Metals (ASX:QPM) has upgraded proved and probable reserves at its Moranbah gas project by 38% to 331 petajoules thanks to the success of its ongoing well workover program.

Summit Minerals (ASX:SUM) has kicked off exploration at its Ecuador niobium and REE project in Brazil’s Paraiba State where extraordinarily high niobium concentrations have been found in surface sampling.

West Cobar Metals (ASX:WC1) has declared a maiden inferred resource of 12Mt grading 103ppm scandium at the Newmont deposit within its Salazar critical minerals project in southern Western Australia.

To top it off, preliminary metallurgical testwork has reported high scandium leach recoveries of up to 81.2% at atmospheric pressure.

The scandium resource adds to the existing REE, titanium doxide and alumina resources at Newmont of 83Mt at 1117ppm total rare earth oxides, 29Mt at 5.01% titanium dioxide and 942ppm TREO, and 4Mt at 29.6% alumina.

At Stockhead, we tell it like it is. While AdAlta, Airtasker, Arizona Lithium, Belararox, Challenger Gold, CuFe, Eagle Mountain, Galan Lithium, Kula Gold, Lanthanein Resources, Parkway Corporate and Queensland Pacific Metals are Stockhead advertisers, they did not sponsor this article.

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