Closing Bell: Aussie stocks surprisingly kick butt on Wednesday

• Small cap index up 0.8%
• ASX 200 is up 0.5%
• Arcadia Minerals did something pretty cool with its JORC

The ASX 200 is up 0.5% and the Emerging Companies (XEC) index is about 0.8% higher as the Resources and Energy Sectors led gains.

Volumes are pretty light, sentiment is uncertain and no-one really wants to play mid-reporting season, while the forces that are gather to wield their grey matter at Jackson Hole this weekend.

That said, the local markets surprised punters to the upside as a few strong results tipped trade into the green.

Around the region, Mainland China markets are leading the bleeding. The Shenzhen index has been smashed, and has led losses regionally, falling 2.3%. The Shanghai Composite was 1.5% lower.

Over in Honkers, the Hang Seng shed 1.2%, largely because the Hang Seng Tech index was smashed by tepid results from fformer giants like JD.com and the electric vehicle maker Xpeng.

Xpeng Xpunged itself of about 12% market value after shares drove off a cliff on the back of a largely unXpected quarterly loss. Not that Xtraordinary, I xpect as the company does lack some management Xperience, which does Xplain the Xpress fall.

Meanwhile, in slightly more serious news, S&P Global’s research arm says China’s economy is booked for a long stay in Struggletown. The S&P Market Intelligence team suggests Chinese GDP is likely to clatter onto an almost unheard of 2.6% quarter on quarter calamity in April-June period.

“The government’s dynamic zero-COVID policy will remain in place through at least March 2023, preventing a return to normalcy and limiting the effectiveness of the government’s new stimulus programs,“ S&P Global Market Intelligence warns.

ASX SMALL CAP LEADERS

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Today, Wednesday the something something (remember the date) because  Arcadia Minerals (ASX:AM7) lifted its JORC mineral resource estimate by about 560%.

I don’t know if this is a measurement of how little AM7 had in the way of previous goodies, but now it has a lot more.

The highlights of the announcement just keep getting better and better as we read them, including the aforementioned MRE increase to 85.2 million tonnes @ 633ppm for 286,909t Li2CO3 (LCE), while Cyclone Test Work indicates that a concentrate of 59.6 million tonnes @ 817ppm for 259,231t Li2CO3 could be produced.

The ore body is at surface from 0.2m to 12m and open to depth, and current exploration has only covered only 19% of 14 exposed pans in the Bitterwasser District.

ASX SMALL CAP LAGGARDS

Here are the worst performing ASX small cap stocks:

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If EML Payments (ASX:EML) is going well, it’s probably not going to last.

And thus the curse of the Irish is back a sesh or two after the troubled payments company had a day of gains, with EML ‘fessing up that its Sentenial business is actually a cesspool of possibly fraudulent activity.

Seems the ill-spelled platform has become a haven for ill-intending merchants, certainly EML shares fell off a high place today, down down down around 15% as it came tumbling out of a Wednesday trading halt.

“EML is taking steps to investigate and understand the circumstances surrounding the fraud, and has commenced steps to recover any losses. EML is confident that the maximum amount of any losses will not exceed €5.5 million ($7.9 million) but may be lower depending on the success of recovery actions,” EML told the exchange earlier.

WHAT YOU MAY’VE MISSED ON THE ASX TODAY

There’s only one piece of news in here this arvo, but it’s a freakin’ belter… because the  late-breaking super-juicy gossip is that Dual listed Canadian company Copper Mountain (ASX:C6C) has terminated its Chief Financial Officer, Mr Rodney A. Shier – effective immediately – two words which are never a sign that something excellent has happened.

Some digging around reveals:

Shier – a 20-year veteran of executive and director roles at a number of publicly–traded mining companies – recently late-filed a tranche of insider sales.

Whole insider selling is most definitely not a crime (the bad insider is insider trading) – but failing to notify when insider selling happens is most certainly a problem, especially when withholding the info leads to unearned profits.

In this case – and in lieu of any further details from Copper Mountain leaving this entirely conjecture –  a SEDI insider filing sheet for Shier shows a tranche of 12 insider sales lodged on Monday 22 August relating to sales which originate as far back as June 2021.

If Shier had sold all of the shares he disposed of in one lash at today’s price, the trade would

A) be worth about $1.5m, and

B) shatter investor confidence in the system like a broken femur

Instead, to the casual observer one could imagine Shier’s pocketed nearly $4 million, by hiding those sales from the market. That would allegedly be seen as suuuuper-shady. 

In the end it’s probably got something to do with dual Canadian listing, or its highly likely this is the reason he’s been punted, or he could be going fishing in the Yukon – again, it’s an ill-silence out of C6c so far  – but if it’s something other than that, there’ll be a lot of knowingly surprised faces around the ASX and SEDI tomorrow.

TRADING HALTS

Equus Mining (ASX:EQE) – Capital Raise, because horse mining ain’t cheap.  

Metalicity (ASX:MCT) – Metalicity’s got news about a lithium project acquisition – if you’re a hardcore battery enthusiast, you probably won’t want to miss it.