The ASX Emerging Companies (XEC) is 1.1% higher on Thursday, while the boring old ASX200 (XJO) is 1.2% higher.

Here’s my overnight summary – a brief cessation of hostilities; a momentary lapse of reason; and everyone just chilled for a second and cooled off a little – oil, iron ore, gold, and even the overall pervading sense of doom…

And the metals everyone is into at the moment, nickel for an example. Although, I’m pretty certain Nickel Mines (ASX:NIC) shares tanked again today.

But the travel sector did well and tech stocks rebounded too.

This man’s army

Elsewhere, the Prime Minister plans to make the Australian Defence Force circa 30% bigger. Bigger people, bigger tech, bigger spies… just bigger.

He says that should be good to go by 2040… around the same time those nuclear subs hit the water.

 

ANZ: Some consternation over inflation

Finally, the ANZ bank has upgraded their near-term inflation forecasts. Senior economist Catherine Birch saying headline inflation is, “getting close to 5% year on year as the economic impact of Ukraine and here at home boost the costs of everything from petrol to food”.

“The additional near-term inflation increases the probability of an earlier start to cash rate hikes but we still view Q3 as more likely than Q2,” she added.

 

TODAY’S BIGGEST SMALL CAP WINNERS

(Stocks highlighted in yellow rose after making announcements during the trading day).

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Advanced Human Imaging (ASX:AHI) a WA-based med-tech which specialises in images of advanced humans (actually, they have a pretty cool smartphone-based scanner for your fitness levels and such) jumped out of the Thursday blocks – gaining over 37% by lunchtime thanks to an obviously unpopular Bank of New York Mellon Corporation cutting its stake and consequently trimming its voting power.

St George Mining (ASX:SGQ) says metallurgical work produced high-grade nickel and copper concentrates with strong credits for PGEs, cobalt and gold out of its Stricklands deposit.

Executive chairman John Prineas saying the results are an important milestone, particularly because – “…the prices for all metals in our commodity suite at historical highs.”

And retail has-been – I mean e-commerce giant – Myer (MYR) enjoyed some decent actual sales growth over the first half , up 8.5% but largely thanks to stupendous online sales which continue to outperform –  up 47.5% – and really someone should be asking someone (not Solomon Lew though) if the rental costs are worth the effort.

Any hoo… all of this helped bring in some decent NPAT – $32.3m – more than 55% better than the prior year – adjusted for Jobkeeper.

 

TODAY’S BIGGEST SMALL CAP LOSERS

(Stocks highlighted in yellow fell after making announcements during the trading day).

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Today’s Emilio Estevez stock – the anti-Charlie Sheen, (losing for no clear reason) is nano-tech play AnteoTech which has copped something of a mad pasting – it’s down 35%.

There may be a veiled cause – the firm did lodge an investor presentation with the ASX today, but one would imagine that’s an incredibly crap presso to cause such a kerfuffle. Not saying it didn’t, I know I’ve lost more than 40% of the crowd with some of mine.

And if this isn’t the best sci-fi cast imaginable then you can just Freejack me too:

 

Tough times it was on Thursday for Tali (ASX:TD1), the med-tech fell hard and fast after revealing plans to raise $1.5m via placement at a horrendous 42.1% discount to the last closing price.

Australian Dairy Nutritionals Group (ASX:AHF) is down well over 6% after raising $4.5 million through the issue of 69.5 million new stapled securities. AHF recently announced its infant formula ranges would be sold nationally in Chemist Warehouse and has appointed a distributor in China.

ANNOUNCEMENTS YOU SHOULD NOT HAVE MISSED

Digital Wine Ventures (ASX:DV8) was higher by some 10% today on news it was retiring its WINEDEPOT platform, which was designed to streamline distribution. WINEDEPOT suppliers and buyers will be migrated to DV8’s recently acquired Kaddy Marketplace.
With nickel prices booming there was good news for Sabre Resources (ASX:SBR)  shareholders today with its price rising 20% to 0.006 cents on news of identification of high-grade nickel sulphide targets for drilling on its 70% owned Sherlock Bay Nickel-Copper Cobalt Project, in the Pilbara region of Western Australia.
A recent scoping study on the project development indicated positive cash flow at prevailing nickel pricing of US$10/lb, and that cashflow potential could be significantly enhanced through the discovery of higher-grade resources and/or a higher nickel price (currently >US$17/lb).
And Antilles Gold (ASX:AAU) is up ~7% to 7.8 cents following a positive review by its exploration director Dr Chris Grainger into the potential of a cluster of outcropping, large porphyry copper-gold deposits near Ciego de Avila in central Cuba.
Antilles Gold has recommended they be included in its Los Llanos Exploration Agreement with the Cuban Government’s mining company, GeoMinera SA.

TRADING HALTS

PSC Insurance Group (ASX:PSI) – Capital Raise

Australian Dairy Nutritionals Group (ASX:AHF) – Capital Raise – back trading