• ASX 200 benchmark climbs 1.5% during an otherwise super-quiet day
  • Tesla dives 12.2% and Apple slips back under US$2T market cap
  • Extra-special bonus: The greatest sporting achievement we’re gonna see all year

 

Welcome to the end of the first Hump Day of 2023, a turning point on the calendar that denotes that we will soon be able to stop pointing out that it’s the first whatever-we’re-talking-about of the new year.

It’s been quiet around here today – not many announcements worth getting excited about, but there has been some movement among the small caps, which we’ll get to in a minute.

The big news for the day is, obviously, that we’ve all learned that when there aren’t that many distractions around, the ASX is perfectly capable of putting in a solid day’s effort towards making people feel happier, deep down in their wallets.

The benchmark started well with a 0.8% bump at open, and got better as the day wore on, trending happily along towards a 1.5% gain for the day, which I think we can all agree is just lovely.

The InfoTech, Financials and Consumer Discretionary sectors all had absolute bangers today, individually topping 2.0% gains (+2.75% for InfoTech) and leading the charge for the market’s happy ending today.

The only laggard was the Energy sector, which fell 1.54% over the course of the day.

There were a few billion dollar babies in the Top Gainers list today, including Sayona (ASX:SYA), moving true to form and swingin’ like it’s the 60s, up 10.5% on no news.

Also climbing today was Magellan (ASX:MFG), up a tidy 7.6% for the day, and Telix Pharma (ASX:TLX) also cranked out a cracker, up 6.85% – both of them on no news as well.

 

NOT THE ASX

Most of the big market news has come from the US overnight, where tech stocks took a poorly-placed dump and a few major milestones were hit.

As mentioned at lunch time, Tesla stocks fell 12.2% overnight, a move that has been widely criticised by Elon Musk, whose personal fortune has fallen more than US$9 billion since we rang in the new year.

Musk would probably have taken to Twitter to moan about it, but his new toy has been broken for most of the day – possibly because he forgot to feed the hamster that’s been powering it since he bought it, but also possibly because he’s stopped paying rent at Twitter HQ and somebody’s turned the power off entirely.

The other major milestone was Apple falling back below US$2 trillion in market cap for the first time since November 2021, which is obviously pretty dire for a company that once boasted a market cap almost the size of the GDP of Germany.

In Asian market news, China is being super-Chinese about Covid again, threatening punitive retribution over the sheer willful insolence of countries – like Australia – daring to impose Covid restrictions on travellers from mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau.

In Shanghai, the market has risen 0.32% so far today, while in Hong Kong the Hang Seng is up 2.25% as the trading day there moves past the halfway point.

In Japan, however, the Nikkei has fallen 1.16% after the whole of Tokyo was put on “kusai mono ni futa“ notice, because the city’s botanical garden is about to host a rare and putrid event – the once-every-few-years blooming of the so-called Corpse Flower.

For those not in the know, when the Corpse Flower blooms, it looks like an enormous flower-pee pee and smells like someone forgot to check on their elderly neighbour, who hasn’t been seen for a few weeks in the middle of a hot, humid summer.

 

FROM THE HEADLINES

In a case of Life Imitating Life (which I’m kinda cranky I missed earlier today), Tesla’s share price plunging off a cliff overnight (share price down 12.2%, Musk US$9 billion poorer, yada yada) has been mirrored by news that a literal Tesla has literally plunged off a literal cliff in California.

With four (presumably screaming) people on board, the Tesla sedan plummeted more than 76m down a cliff known to locals as The Devil’s Slide, flipping a few times before coming to rest.

Amazingly, all four occupants (two adults, two kids) were plucked from the wreckage alive, so that’s a fairly significant tick in the ‘plus’ column for Tesla on an otherwise pretty awful day.

And, in a bit of sports news – a rarity for us, but this is simply too amazing to ignore – comes the single-greatest leg of top-tier professional darts, courtesy of the 2023 PDC World Darts Championship Final between Michael van Gerwen and Michael Smith.

 

 

It’s an astounding feat from both participants, made all the more glorious by the fact that it happened during a sporting event where competitors are likely to be about as physically unfit as a pro athlete could possibly be, eclipsing the utter glory of the “beers, ciggies and tinned baked beans” era of Australia’s own sporting legend, Shane Warne.

Maybe that’s why I love it so much. Representation is important.

 

ASX SMALL CAP LEADERS

Here are the best performing ASX small cap stocks:

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

Wordpress Table Plugin

 

In Small Caps news, Greenvale Mining (ASX:GRV) has bolted up the charts today, up 35% as the dust begins to settle from the complicated 80% acquisition of Knox Resources from GRV by Astro Resources (ASX:ARO).

This morning’s winners continued to do well, too, after some solid news for ECS Botanics (ASX:ECS), saw it surge 19% after announcing that  it’s inked a deal to supply Ilios Santė GmbH with a minimum $9.9 million worth of GMP manufactured, medicinal cannabis products over 3 years.

There was also a huge spike in volume behind embattled memory tech company 4DS Memory (ASX:4DS), which has shot up 21.2% today despite a complete lack of any market-moving news since the last time it went bonkers for no apparent reason in early December last year.

 

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:

Wordpress Table Plugin

 

LAST ORDERS

There was very little news from the market today, except for two noteworthy items that we’ve covered off elsewhere but which I’ll use to pad this out and make it seem like I’m earning my half-dozen brass buttons and pretty shells for the day.

The first comes via Cyclone Metals (ASX:CLE), which announced this morning that it’s finalised the acquisition of “the largest undeveloped magnetite iron ore project in the world”, after buying 100% of Labrador Iron, owner of the formidable Block 103 deposit in Canada.

Block 103 is located within the heart of the Labrador Trough which is one of the largest iron ore belts in the world, and accounts for 99% of Canada’s iron ore. The project covers an area of 7,275 hectares, located 30km northwest of the mining town of Schefferville, Quebec, Canada.

Cyclone says Block 103 has a historical mineral resource of 7,200Mt @ 29.2% Fe (classified as Inferred in accordance with the provisions of the Canadian NI 43-101) – but that historical resource is based only on 4km of strike of the total 12km of geological strike.

And Red Resources (ASX:R3D) has reported significant downhole intercepts of primary copper mineralisation below the open pit including 77 m @ 0.62% Cu at the company’s Tartarra project in the Chillagoe Region in Far North Queensland.

R3D also reports that primary copper sulphide mineralisation also intercepted in drilling north of the open pit including 12m @ 0.84% Cu & 19 m @ 0.62% Cu, as well as separate potential northern copper oxide zones with down hole intercepts up to 12 m @ 0.35% Cu from surface with further assays pending.

“The drilling results highlight the potential for a significant primary copper resource below and to the north of the existing open pit with part of this potential to be realised in the updated primary copper resource estimation,” R3D Managing Director Stephen Bartrop said.

“Meanwhile the initial drill results from the northern oxide zone indicate potential for shallow copper oxide mineralisation that may be suitable for copper sulphate production and we await the pending assays.”

 

TRADING HALTS

Nothing to see here, folks. Move along. Quickly, now… we’d all like to get home.

 

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