The ASX200 closed up slightly by +0.1% on Monday as gains in tech and gold stocks were offset by losses in the energy sector. 

Energy stocks struggled as crude prices fell more than US$1 a barrel in Asian hours today after Israel confirmed that it has withdrawn more soldiers from southern Gaza and committed to fresh peace talks.

 

Source: MarketIndex

 

Gold stocks climbed, with the ASX All Ordinaries Gold (XGD) up around 2.5%, led by Newmont Corp (ASX:NEM). Brokers have recently backed Newmont, with Citi telling their clients the soaring gold price will provide a major tailwind for the stock. 

Iron ore futures prices meanwhile gained more than 4% in Singapore today as Chinese traders returned after a long weekend. China is the world’s largest iron ore importer.

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is wrapping up her trip in China, where she took the opportunity to chastise Beijing for saturating the globe with exports of cheap goods. 

“China is too large to export its way to rapid growth,” Yellen said,  adding that the nation’s factories are currently churning out more than “the global market can bear.”

Elsewhere, a Bloomberg reported suggested that India could  lead global growth by 2028 as China and Western countries struggle to gain ground. India’s US$3.5 trillion economy however is still dwarfed by China’s US$17.8 trillion.

 

ASX LARGE CAPS WINNERS TODAY:

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Qantas (ASX:QAN) jumped +5% today after the airlines said it was making the biggest ever expansion of its Qantas Frequent Flyer program in its 35-year history. The Qantas Frequent Flyers will have access to over 20 million more reward seats with the launch of Classic Plus Flight Rewards, a new way for members to use their Qantas Points to book flights.

Family monitoring app Life360 (ASX:360) was the best performing large cap, up +17%  after reporting 4.8 million active users in a record first quarter.

 

ASX SMALL CAP LEADERS

Today’s best performing small cap stocks:

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Linius Technologies (ASX:LNU) was climbing on the back off last week’s news that the company had signed a new agreement to provide its sports solution, Whizzard, to the Lone Star Conference – one of the college-level footballsporting associations in the United States.

Lepidico (ASX:LPD) announced that eligible directors and key management confirmed they will participate in an Entitlement Offer.

Qoria (ASX:QOR)  knocked back a takeover proposal from K1 Investment Management that it received late last week, which had K1 offering $0.40 cash per Qoria share for 100% of the company. No prizes for guessing that Qoria has since climbed in value to just over that offer amount.

Mining minnow Alice Queen (ASX:AQX) was up +20% on news that its largest shareholder, Gage Resource Development, has agreed to invest a further $3.6 million to help advance its gold exploration activities. Gage currently holds an 18.67% stake in the company.

Far East Gold (ASX:FEG) announced that initial assays of drill core from the first ever drill hole at the Aloe Rek prospect area  in the company’s Woyla Copper Gold Project have confirmed high-grade gold within the Victory vein system. Detailed field mapping across the Woyla tenement have confirmed an increase of 5,500m in the strike length of th project’s low sulphidation epithermal vein system from 13,000m to 18,500m.

3-D metal printing stock Aurora Labs (ASX:A3D) has successfully manufactured an Australian gas turbine engine with 3D metal printed parts. There’s a lot of market interest as well, it says. The current model, 200N, will be available in the market as early as next month with “application not only to unmanned aerial vehicles, but also instant power generation”.

Superior Resources (ASX:SPQ) rose after the Queensland government has done it a solid by materially backing the promising Bottletree Cu-Au-Mo prospect’s drilling with a Critical Minerals Funding Grant to the tune of $300,000. Specifically, it’s called a Collaborative Exploration Initiative (CEI) grant and is approved by the Qld gov’s Department of Resources.

Kuniko (ASX:KNI) has just completed a JORC-guideline-navigated Inferred Mineral Resource Estimate for its Ertelien nickel-copper-cobalt project and it comes in at an impressive 23Mt, which, according to it, underlines potential for a new European source of sustainable, disseminated and high-grade mineralisation. The MRE provides a total resource of 23.3Mt of Inferred resources at 0.31% NiEq (0.21% Ni, 0.16% Cu and 0.014% Co) containing 49.7kt of nickel, 37.3kt of copper and 3.3kt of cobalt, including high-grade sulphide resources of 4.59Mt at 0.64% NiEq and disseminated sulphide resources of 18.68Mt of at 0.22% NiEq.

Graphite minnow Evion Group (ASX:EVG) announced that production has now begun at an expandable graphite JV site dubbed Panthera Graphite Technologies. That’s a newly constructed operation that’s a 50/50 arrangement between a company called Metachem Manfacturing and EVG.

Red 5 (ASX:RED) has achieved gold production of 50,132 ounces for the March quarter from the King of the Hills Gold Project – its fourth consecutive quarter of production exceeding 50,000 ounces. Production for FY24 to date stands at 158,158oz, leaving the company well placed to deliver full year production at the top end of annual gold production guidance for FY24 of 195,000 – 215,000 ounces.

Silver Lake Resources (ASX:SLR) said sales for the March quarter were 64,463 ounces of gold and 338 tonnes of copper. For YTD FY24, sales were 187,244 ounces of gold and 872 tonnes of copper, with 179,439 ounces gold and 872 tonnes copper sales from the Western Australian operations. Both the Mount Monger and Deflector operations performed strongly through the quarter, with both operations well positioned to meet the top end of their respective guidance ranges.

Starpharma (ASX:SPL) has entered into a strategic partnership with Medicxi, a leading life sciences investment firm dedicated to financing companies developing innovative medicines, to co-found a new UK-based company called Petalion Therapeutics. Medicxi will invest up to US$25M into Petalion, which will be led by highly experienced pharmaceutical executive Dr Mehdi Shahidi. Petalion will initially focus on developing novel targeted dendrimer-drug conjugate therapies in oncology, utilising Starpharma’s proprietary DEP dendrimer platform technology.

 

ASX SMALL CAP LAGGARDS

Today’s best performing small cap stocks:

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APM Human Services International (ASX:APM) received a new takeover bid from 29% shareholder Madison Dearborn Partners at $1.40/sh cash after a previous offer from another party fell through.

Agribusiness Elders (ASX:ELD) says first half trading for FY24 was “significantly below expectations” due to subdued client sentiment; low crop, sheep and cattle prices; subdued trading due to late start to winter crop in WA; and margin pressure in some key agricultural chemical products.

 

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT – PM Edition

ADX Energy (ASX:ADX) has brought its Anshof-3 oil discovery well in Upper Austria back into production after installing and commissioning a 3,000 barrel per day permanent production facility with the ability to produce from multiple wells.

Australian Mines’ (ASX:AUZ) preliminary exploration work at its Jequie rare earths and niobium project in Brazil has identified numerous hard rock boulder outcrops and surface saprolite clay systems across the high priority Jequie North and Jequie South areas.

CuFe (ASX:CUF) has completed a tenement wide soil geochemical program that has extended previously reported Li2O soil anomalies and target zones at its North Dam project in in WA. This includes an anomalous Li2O within soils zone that now extends to ~3.5km strike.

First Lithium’s (ASX:FL1) drilling between the Main and Western Pegmatite bodies at its Blakala prospect in Mali has intersected further high-grade Li2O zones. Notable assays include 8m @ 2.23% Li2O from 38m and 14m @ 1.48% Li2O from 67m.

Iltani Resources (ASX:ILT) has is moving to restart drilling at its Orient silver-indium project in Queensland. The 11 hole program will cover 1,800m of strike at the Orient West target to extend mineralisation to the northeast and southwest, enabling generation of an exploration target that will form the basis of future resource definition drilling.

Lithium Universe (ASX:LU7) has outlined the processing gap between spodumene production and battery manufacturing in North America as why its plan to build a 16,000tpa lithium carbonate refinery makes so perfect sense.

Variscan Mines (ASX:VAR) has increased the ground covered by its Novales-Udias project in Spain by 70% after it was awarded five new licences covering 36.6km2. These licences are e immediately adjacent to the existing San Jose and Buenahora tenements and present a de-risked ration opportunity over very prospective areas to increase scale of the project.

White Cliff Minerals (ASX:WCN) plans to kick off an extensive diamond drilling program at its 2,900km2 Radium Point project in Canada’s Northwest Territories that will seek to unlock the uranium-gold-silver-copper potential in previously untested areas.

 


TRADING HALTS

Great Southern Mining (ASX:GSN) – pending the release of an announcement in relation to a proposed capital raising.

Empire Resources (ASX:ERL) – pending the release of an announcement to the market in relation to a capital raise.

VRX Silica (ASX:VRX) – the company is undertaking a capital raising.

Heartland Group Holdings (ASX:HGH) – pending the outcome of the capital raising on the NZX.

Ansell (ASX:ANN) – pending an announcement in relation to a corporate transaction and an associated capital raising.

 

 

At Stockhead, we tell it like it is. While ADX Energy, Australian Mines, CuFe, First Lithium, Iltani Resources, Lithium Universe, Variscan Mines and White Cliff Minerals are Stockhead advertisers, they did not sponsor this article.

 

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