Closing Bell: Little caps do better than big caps; Redbubble’s green bubble; and Haranga tops resources

• The ASX 200 is pretty flat, small caps up circa 1% 
• Materials and energy leading gains
• Copper miners higher, Redbubble returns

The benchmark ASX200 was slightly higher at the close after some earlier gains. The Emerging Companies (XEC) index has found 1% by 4pm as US Futures moved from red to green.

Today’s wobblier sectors are the Real Estate, Consumer discretionary stocks and the IT spaces.  Resources have done a little better, as have utilities.

Interestingly, it’s Bitcoin which has also climbed out of a hole in the last month, up around 7%.

eToro’s Josh Gilbert says Bitcoin has shown resilience in the last week and is beginning “to find a foothold in this current market” after a fairly sustained period of in the doghouse risk-off sentiment.

“The big question for investors is whether this is a relief rally in a bear market or the start of a sustained move higher.

Josh says it’s likely bitcoin investors will focus their attention on equities for a clue on this, especially stateside tech.

“Bitcoin’s correlation to the Nasdaq is rising again after falling in early June, so if equities have bottomed, investors may feel that the worst for bitcoin is behind us.”

“A further advance for bitcoin will likely act as a leading indicator for a shift in sentiment and a return of investor confidence in risk assets,” Josh says. “This could all come to light this week with the release of US inflation data, which is expected to reveal that inflation has peaked and could spell a change in fortune for risk assets.”

On local markets, the headline act was OZ Minerals’ (ASX:OZL) and its ballsy call to dis BHP’s $25 per share off.

News of the rejection by the $8.5 billion dollar company saw its price jump by 35% before lunch,.

ASX SMALL CAP LEADERS

Here are the best performing ASX small cap stocks for today [intraday]:

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

Cardno (ASX:CDD) recently completed its sale of Cardno International Development, with proceeds of $56.5m to be distributed to Cardno Shareholders, equivalent to $1.70 per share, in three tranches.

The stock rose from $0.65 to $1.00 in morning business, before settling at 86.5 cents when the ASX threw on the brakes by pausing trade for a speedy explanation.

After being terribly on the nose, post-pandemic, the online Aussie marketplace Redbubble (ASX:RBL) has gone on a bit of a Monday burn, when the brokers at UBS upgraded the dismal stock to a buy this morning.

UBS says RBL’s looming FY22 numbers may not be as utterly awful as expected, with a few signs suggesting sales might be a beat on the market’s admittedly low forecasts.

The price target on Redbubble was lifted to $1.60, from $1.45, as the Redbubble jumped almost 17%.

“Given the extreme level of investor disinterest in the name… we think a FY22 result which meets consensus expectations, combined with an improved July sales update, will be a positive catalyst for the share price,” UBS said.

Shares in Booktopia (ASX:BKG) are up as well on Monday after getting a lease agreement for a big warehouse thing in Strathfield, which it reckons will ‘underpin the company’s future distribution capacity.’

At the very top of Resources Top 5  today is Haranga Resources (ASX:HAR), which listed earlier this year with a bunch of uranium and gold projects  in West Africa.

Included in our ‘dirt cheap ASX uranium stocks with upside’ yarn, HAR’s advanced-stage and large greenfields exploration project, Saraya, has been identified as a ‘highly prospective’ uranium target following a review of historical drilling.

Significant equivalent uranium intersections not previously reported from historical drilling include 47.8m at 1,630ppm eU from 72.4m, 46.2m at 1,548ppm eU from 42.2m, 10.1m at 5,537ppm eU from 27.7m and 4.6m at 8,660ppm eU from 28.1m

HAR non-executive chairman Michael Davy says not only is the company seeing significant widths of uranium across numerous holes at shallow depths, but also high-grade mineralisation.

“The anticipated commencement of drilling at the Saraya prospect will coincide well with the ongoing regional permit-wide termite mound sampling program.

“Interestingly, historical drilling was only concentrated over 0.5 square kilometres of the 1,650-kilometre permit and numerous other large radiometric anomalies have already been identified for follow-up drilling.”

Vivek Dhar the commodities whisperer at the CommBank says copper prices are higher for now, but that strength appears ‘conditional on China,’ and the Middle Kingdom  ditching its COVID-zero approach to life.

Small copper stocks have risen sharply on Monday, Sultan Resources (ASX:SLZ) and Copper Mountain Mining (ASX:C6C) both well over 30% on Monday.

ASX SMALL CAP LAGGARDS

Here are the best performing ASX small cap stocks for today [intraday]:

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

WHAT YOU MAY’VE MISSED

While not quite on the scale of, say… Kim Kardashian splitting up with the hilarious ghoul she’s been dating, there’s an increasingly ugly spat developing between Diverger (ASX:DVR) and Centrepoint Alliance (ASX:CAF) which is making the proposed acquisition by the former of the latter look shaky.

A recap: In late June – Diverger was all like “OMG, we just upped our stake in you to 39.1 million shares and we totally want to buy the rest of you”, and then Centrepoint was like “Sounds juicy… let’s talk about it” and Diverger was all “How does $0.325 a slice sound?” and Centrepoint was all “Ew. No.” and then the front fell off.

Diverger says the offer represented a:

• 30.0% premium to Centrepoint Alliance’s last close price at 22 June 2022;
• 48.2% premium to Centrepoint Alliance’s volume weighted average price (VWAP) for the 5-days to 22 June 2022;
• 42.8% premium to Centrepoint Alliance’s VWAP for the 1 month to 22 June 2022; and
• 29.8% premium to Centrepoint Alliance’s VWAP for the 6 months to 22 June 2022

Centrepoint said those were all valid points, but the offer was way, way too low, and since then it appears that there have been some talks. But today, at 8.30am, Centrepoint told the ASX (and everyone else) that it had nothing further to say on the matter.

So DVR went public to say that its initial offer was based on a number of assumptions about, CAF, and that from it’s discussions with the company, DVR says that some of the things it assumed weren’t gonna happen and – while that alone wasn’t insurmountable – it says that CAF hasn’t provided access to information to let DVR do it’s DD, and for that reason… they’re out.

Annnnd, that’s all we’ve got time for today. Except for a long list of Super-Exciting Trading Halts News™– we’ll see you on the other side of the coma.

TRADING HALTS

Southern Cross Gold (ASX:SXG) – SXG has some material exploration results at the Company’s Sunday Creek Project, which we suspect means they’ve hit a rich vein of denim. 

DevEx Resources (ASX:DEV) – DevEx is it’s due to release drill results at the Nabarlek Uranium Project. We are expecting – *ahem* – glowing reports.

Po Valley Energy (ASX:PVE) – Raising capital, possibly to pay for Kung Fu lessons.

Odin Metals (ASX:ODM) – Capital raising, to help defray the costs of having Sir Anthony Hopkins portray the company in Thor: Ragnarok.

Evolution Energy Minerals (ASX:EV1) – Capital Raising to fund the ongoing war with Creationism Energy Minerals.

Tempus Resources (ASX:TMR) – Tempus has drilling results incoming, just in the nick of time.

Riversgold (ASX:RGL) – Riversgold has been shopping, and will make an announcement about its purchase very soon.

Conico (ASX:CNJ) – Capital raising, because Reykjavik is proving too difficult to spell.