CLOSING BELL: How to bank $1.5bn doing sweet bugger all on your arse in a deck chair

• Queen Elizabeth II soared off into the heavens
• Classic Minerals pulls off an amazing impersonation of Her Maj
• MinRes does absolutely nothing, but banks $1.5bn in value anyway

 

What a cracker of a day. This morning was an absolute rager, kicking off with a sharp-ish 0.3% jolt which has continued to move upward in manner more tortoise than hare, and it’s looking like closing around 0.7% higher.

Sector-wise, it was a swing-and-a-mix today, as the market showed about as much cohesion as a kindy-class barn dance. Churning out the belters were Energy (+1.06%) and Materials (+3.07%) bringing the spice to the table.

It’s the Materials sector that has all the good stories, though – with a couple of billionaire-size diggers bringing joy to investors.

Billionaires were breaking out the bubbly at Mineral Resources (ASX:MIN) which cranked out  a 12.4% jump simply because there are rumours that it’s looking into turning its lithium side hustle into something we can all buy a chunk of.

MinRes, of course, said “yeah. Nah. that’s bulls–t, lads”, everyone piled in and we all got schooled on how to make more than a billion dollars in one day by doing absolutely nothing at all.

Also leaping like they’ve found themselves at the proctologist’s instead of the dentist was De Grey (ASX:DEG) which has climbed 12.9% today, after releasing a prefeasibilty study document that is just way, way too long.

Honestly. 97 pages of semi-impenetrable mining jargon and numbers – it very nearly killed two people here in the office. Gruesome, it was.

But while it’ll never make the NY Time Bestseller list, it certainly revved up the precious metals wonks, who piled on like footballers when someone looks at them funny at a Kuta Beach nightclub.

DEG was up around 12% by the time everyone went home, and that was today’s lesson in how to make $150m by rewriting the Harry Potter series and replacing every second word with a random string of numbers.

 

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 SECONDS

Overseas, and the news cycle’s been dominated by the sudden and saddening (for so, so many reasons) ascension of King Charles III to the throne.

News that the Wingnut of Wales’ dear mother, Queen Elizabeth II, had shuffled off rocked the world, and Aussie investors reacted to it by quietly and very respectfully throwing every single piece of currency with her face on it they could find at Classic Minerals. More on that later.

In the US, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell disappointingly failed to keep the gaping maw on the front of his head closed, doubling down on his threat to keep hiking rates until they’re about belt-level – which, on a man his age, is about a quarter-inch from his nipples.

US investors gave precisely zero heed to the UK’s sad news, with all three major stock market indices rising by 0.60% each following a late surge after they found out Her Maj had passed away.

In Asia, there wasn’t a whole of movement after lunch. Everyone was looking for – and got – the happy ending to the week, Hong Kong up 2.47%, Shanghai grabbing +0.72% and Japan’s Nikkei put on 0.66%.

In Crypto, Bitcoin’s gone up today because it had to at some point or a lot of very earnest people would look pretty stupid.

ASX SMALL CAP LEADERS

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Okay. There is one huge winner today, which went so ballistic New Zealand even called to ask us to “keep the bloody noise down, coz the sheep are trying to watch the news”.

Classic Minerals made an announcement that it’s secured $10 millon in non-recourse funding to hit the “GO!” button at Kat Gap and start processing the ~90,000oz gold resource it’s sitting on.

The cash is coming from Goldvalley, which has agreed to provide funding for the extraction and processing of ore in sequential parcels of 100,000 tonnes, presumably until the gold runs out or everyone’s so rich they stop coming to work.

Whatever the plan is, it sent investors into the kind of frenzy we normally only see when a whale goes belly up off Bondi and the sharks come in for a feed.

At one point, our charts had Classic trading more than 290% above this morning’s low water mark, but things have since settled to a far more realistic ~130% climb for the day.

There is absolutely zero doubt that someone, somewhere, made a lot of money today, and to them, we say a hearty “lend us a tenner”.

Today’s late bloomer was Balkan Mining and Minerals, which came out of nowhere to wring out a more modest but still amazing 40.5% win after… umm… no news on the ASX. It’s a mystery to us, but feel free to email if you know the answer.

 

ASX SMALL CAP LAGGARDS

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WHAT YOU MISSED BUT SHOULD PROBABLY KNOW

I so wanted there to be nothing in this bit today, because it’s Friday and I wanna go fishing.

And while we’re not ones to gossip, have you heard the gossip about DW8 and the Hanson-esque Please Explain it got from the ASX?

The regulator’s asking questions about the disclosure of an unpaid debt, apparently $5m that Triton was supposed to hand over more than a month ago but couldn’t because the money’s in your house, and in Jim’s house, or however that scene from It’s a Wonderul Life goes.

The ASX wanted to know why DW8 hadn’t told anyone, DW8 says “Triton kept telling us to come back tomorrow, I’ll have your money, man… honest I will”. Classic stalling tactic – which had DW8 saying “cool cool” for about a week before it became enough of a problem that it was time to tell the market.

DW8 says that was when it was reportable as having a material effect on the price or value of its securities – not when Triton first said it couldn’t pay. We’ll see if the regulator buys the explanation next time, on Australia’s favourite family comedy, I Want My Goddamned Money.

 

TRADING HALTS

Rincon Resources (ASX:RCR) – It’s a two-banger for Rincon, with a capital raise and proposed acquisition on the cards.

Kingfisher Mining (ASX:KFM) – Also fishing for cash today with a capital raise in the works.

Synertec Corporation (ASX:SOP) – Equity raise, possibly to purchase a new company name that doesn’t reek of the 1990s.

Alma Metals (ASX:ALM) – And Alma’s in search of alms, with a capital raise of its own.