CLOSING BELL: ASX rises 1.5pc today, with the Goldies out in front on +3.54pc

ASX snaps a 4-day run of bruising luck with a welcome 1.5% gain
Techies did a lot of the heavy lifting, while the Goldies put on a +3.54% show
The day’s clear winner was Mobilicom, up 150% at day’s end on juicy defence news

Local markets have enjoyed a pretty solid day today, breaking the spine of a 4-day losing streak to pile on a tech-driven 1.5% rise, thanks to a couple of real high flyers.

At the end of the day, the sectors looked like this:

asx winner MOB — Chart via Marketindex.com.au

The tech surge was led by a strong showing on Wall Street overnight, with local stocks piling on some spectacular gains as well.

That includes this morning’s Flying Minnow, Mobilicom (ASX:MOB) – which I’ll tell you allll about in a few minutes – but keen-eyed market watchers will no doubt have noticed that shortly after lunch, there was a noticeably large surge.

That took place in the aftermath of Aussie tech behemoth Megaport (ASX:MP1) dropping a handsomely upgraded guidance report at 12:35pm which sent the $1 billion+ market capper up past $1.4 billion in the space of a few hours.

Megaport said “as a result of continued improvement in the Company’s operating metrics and financial performance”, it’s upgrading its FY23 Normalised EBITDA to be “in the range of $19M to $21M (compared to previous guidance of $16M to $18M)”.

That’s no small hike, and means that MP1’s reported EBITDA Guidance is now expected to be in the range of $24M to $26M.

Megaport stacked on 32% over the course of the afternoon. Impressive stuff.

But as nifty as the tech drive was, it was the Goldies leading the pack for the day, with the XGD All Ords Gold Index banking a whopping +3.54% gain.

So shiny…

NOT THE ASX

Beyond the walls of the ASX, the headlines are slim pickin’s today – but there are a couple of things worth mentioning.

Large Cap miner South32 (ASX:S32) copped a ruler over the knuckles today, agreeing to pay a $2.9 million penalty for using outrageous amounts of water from the Sydney catchment area.

The ABC reports that the company’s Illawarra Coal Holdings was busted draining up to five megalitres a day, without a licence, for about five years between 2018 and 2023 at its Dendrobium mine at Mount Kembla, on the New South Wales South Coast.

The finding against South32 came after an investigation by the Natural Resources Access Regulator, or NRAR, which is pronounced just the way it’s spelled.

Go on, say it… NRAR… like a dinosaur eating peanut butter. NRAR. NRAR.

“These alleged breaches are very serious and they do concern significant quantities of water, water which is lost from an ecologically sensitive area both to surface creeks and wetlands above the Dendrobium coal mine,” NRAR chief regulatory officer Grant Barnes said.

“It is also important to note that this is within Sydney’s drinking water catchment, so any surface water losses are a loss of water that could be used to service Sydney’s drinking water needs,” he continued, before having to sit down because he was clearly parched.

A man’s not a camel, after all.

The $2.9 million fine will be put towards an environmental project to improve local waterways in the Sydney water catchment, as part of an enforceable undertaking.

The $2.9 million penalty is also equal to just 1.3% of the dividends paid to S32 shareholders by the company for the first six months of FY23.

Meanwhile, my kid’s soccer park has been a brown dustbowl for years and my favourite frangipani tree is dead, because water in Sydney’s been a bit scarce for some reason.

Not that I’m suggesting that the penalty is more of a “cost of doing business” than a meaningful punishment for breaking the rules, or anything.

I’m just… you know… saying stuff. Whatever.

Anyhow, maybe it’s best we all go look at how our marvellous small caps went today – that should cheer me up.

TODAY’S ASX SMALL CAP LEADERS

Here are the best performing ASX small cap stocks:

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

Code	Company	Price	%	Volume	Market Cap
MOB	Mobilicom Ltd	0.02	150%	62,002,069	$10,613,414
WWI	West Wits Mining Ltd	0.02	67%	21,398,167	$26,916,207
CCE	Carnegie Cln Energy	0.0015	50%	3,003,978	$15,642,574
CHK	Cohiba Min Ltd	0.004	33%	14,773,835	$6,339,733
KEY	KEY Petroleum	0.002	33%	14,006,685	$2,951,892
TYM	Tymlez Group	0.004	33%	37,500	$3,276,586
RB6	Rubixresources	0.25	32%	1,339,896	$7,989,500
MP1	Megaport Limited	8.83	31%	4,897,420	$1,066,346,669
BXN	Bioxyne Ltd	0.021	31%	262,696	$30,426,326
FRB	Firebird Metals	0.12	29%	123,949	$6,795,975
SGC	Sacgasco Ltd	0.009	29%	1,284,724	$4,310,067
GMN	Gold Mountain Ltd	0.014	27%	38,308,354	$21,669,259
8CO	8Common Limited	0.095	27%	191,695	$16,807,118
AD1	AD1 Holdings Limited	0.005	25%	143,596	$3,290,276
AVW	Avira Resources Ltd	0.0025	25%	1,722,528	$4,267,580
FGL	Frugl Group Limited	0.01	25%	1,002,015	$7,648,496
GTG	Genetic Technologies	0.0025	25%	3,464,847	$23,083,316
MRD	Mount Ridley Mines	0.0025	25%	2,787,166	$15,569,766
NZS	New Zealand Coastal	0.0025	25%	33,333	$3,308,020
OPL	Opyl Limited	0.053	23%	791,929	$3,754,548
EMP	Emperor Energy Ltd	0.017	21%	160,150	$3,764,075
IBX	Imagion Biosys Ltd	0.023	21%	6,526,660	$22,185,650
1AG	Alterra Limited	0.012	20%	80,406	$6,965,525
KRR	King River Resources	0.012	20%	3,965,635	$15,535,249
SIS	Simble Solutions	0.006	20%	2,325,460	$3,014,754

Top of the tree this afternoon, it’s still this morning’s standout winner Mobilicom (ASX:MOB), which managed to scream out a +362% jump in under 20 minutes before the ASX hit the panic button and the whole thing screeched to a (literal) halt.

It’s one of the quickest speeding tickets I’ve ever seen the ASX hand out, but after some back and forth with the powers that be, MOB was back in action and… down she went.

At the close of play, it was trading around +187%, and probably wondering what might have been.

The reason for the big boom this morning, though, is most like a market reaction to news overnight that the dual-listed company had landed part of the juicy defence contract in the US, which will see 120 of Mobilicom’s SkyHopper PRO datalink systems shipped to small-sized drones and robotics giant Teledyne-FLIR (NYSE:TDY).

I don’t know the exact details of what the tech will end up being, but this has “swarms of tiny death drones” written all over it, which is pretty exciting at the best of times – but when it’s news like that from a penny stock, there’s always going to be no shortage of punters willing to toss a lazy $1,000 at it, just in case.

Canberra-based techies archTIS (ASX:AR9) rode the coattails of today’s tech boom, climbing more than 26% on no fresh news.

And West Wits Mining (ASX:WWI) dropped a late afternoon bombshell, which saw it zoom up 25% in late trade on the back of news that the Industrial Development Corporation of South Africa has expressed interest in providing a debt facility of ZAR300 million – just under $28 million – for development capital at West Wits’ Qala Shallow project.

“With this formal expression of interest and terms, we can now proceed to expedite the due diligence process, secure final approval, and embark on a transformative journey,” West Wits chairman Michael Quinert said.

TODAY’S ASX SMALL CAP LAGGARDS

Here are the least best performing ASX small cap stocks:

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

Code	Company	Price	%	Volume	Market Cap
MCL	Mighty Craft Ltd	0.05	-38%	3,633,113	$28,765,154
AXP	AXP Energy Ltd	0.001	-33%	583,333	$8,737,021
GCR	Golden Cross	0.002	-33%	103,981	$3,291,768
DRA	DRA Global Limited	1.3	-30%	1,745	$101,095,041
ZEU	Zeus Resources Ltd	0.024	-23%	16,807,213	$14,175,711
HTG	Harvest Tech Grp Ltd	0.037	-21%	1,300,351	$29,695,513
G50	Gold50Limited	0.175	-20%	18,759	$12,527,460
HVY	Heavymineralslimited	0.175	-20%	2,637,414	$8,488,756
VAR	Variscan Mines Ltd	0.012	-20%	140	$5,070,054
EMU	EMU NL	0.002	-20%	16,880	$3,625,053
MRQ	Mrg Metals Limited	0.002	-20%	1	$4,964,797
NC6	Nanollose Limited	0.059	-19%	302,751	$10,868,705
PIL	Peppermint Inv Ltd	0.0075	-17%	950,462	$18,340,712
ENT	Enterprise Metals	0.005	-17%	274,255	$4,376,826
SRI	Sipa Resources Ltd	0.022	-15%	115,829	$5,932,112
TTT	Titomic Limited	0.018	-14%	1,018,821	$6,593,789
AL8	Alderan Resource Ltd	0.006	-14%	100,034	$4,316,863
AOA	Ausmon Resorces	0.003	-14%	710,000	$3,392,513
EDE	Eden Inv Ltd	0.003	-14%	1,670,847	$10,489,305
G88	Golden Mile Res Ltd	0.05	-14%	17,931,725	$19,104,591
LBT	LBT Innovations	0.025	-14%	542,789	$10,028,075
LDX	Lumos Diagnostics	0.063	-14%	31,885,716	$24,887,166
CBY	Canterbury Resources	0.026	-13%	125,000	$4,335,706
JPR	Jupiter Energy	0.02	-13%	25,500	$28,286,553
VN8	Vonex Limited.	0.027	-13%	420,728	$11,216,687

LAST ORDERS

Time is a fleeting commodity, and most of mine was fleeted right out the window today… so I’ll point you instead to The Delightful Emma Davies, and her afternoon column for all your “stuff we didn’t get around to writing about anywhere else” news, over at In Case You Missed it.