Closing Bell: Thank heavens for the earth, as miners and metals keep everything afloat

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Materials and Info Tech drive today’s market gains
ASX200 wraps a reasonable week, up nearly 1%
Firefinch feels the pinch as demerger reality sets in

The ASX200 (XJO) has ended the session up just under 1%, thanks to a lift from the miners who towed the market to a modest overall gain for the week.

Flag-bearers for today’s march up the charts largely came in the form of some supercharged gains for miners big and small. Southern Cross Gold (ASX:SXG) turned out to be a grower and a shower, packing on more pounds to add to the week’s impressive progress.

Southern Cross flew up ~18% today, with its price hitting $0.70 in the afternoon – a +250.0% shift in a week – which should have anyone holding it happier than happy hour on a sunny Friday arvo.

Horseshoe Minerals (ASX:HOR) posted a similar percentage gain on super-low volume, and the rest of the day’s Top 20 was a sea of Materials sector joy.

Bucking that trend was Firefinch (ASX:FFX), as the market digested the reality of its demerger and Leo Lithium spin-off and found it was causing some severe intestinal distress.

Firefinch shares plummeted, with talk of a sell-off sparked by investors who only really loved it for its lithium – and now the ball is rolling to take that off the table, they’ve decided that it’s time to move on, too.

The precipitous fall from $0.95 to around $0.34 this morning appears to have tapered off, with Firefox shares holding steady around where the market clearly sees its value now that Lady Lithium has left the building.

Asian markets remained mixed, with the Nikkei up (+1.18%), Hong Kong down (1.00%) and Shanghai inching forward (0.42%). Oil prices oozed down further (-0.43%), gold crept up (+0.10%) and the Aussie Dollar was as flat as a mill pond against the USD.

TODAY’S BIGGEST SMALL CAP WINNERS

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

Scroll or swipe to reveal table. Click headings to sort.

Code	Company	Price	%	Volume
AQD	Ausquest Limited	0.028	17%	3,329,635
ARE	Argonaut Resources	0.004	33%	24,258,745
AVE	Avecho Biotech Ltd	0.018	20%	1,494,655
AXI	Axiom Properties	0.069	15%	13,100
AYT	Austin Metals Ltd	0.016	23%	954,882
CDX	Cardiex Limited	0.455	63%	1,187,700
DRX	Diatreme Resources	0.04	25%	13,944,015
FRB	Firebird Metals	0.36	20%	173,375
GPR	Geopacific Resources	0.11	17%	1,683,460
HOR	Horseshoe Metals Ltd	0.038	19%	1,793,536
INR	Ioneer Ltd	0.525	15%	8,635,503
KFM	Kingfisher Mining	0.345	21%	370,305
LCT	Living Cell Tech.	0.007	27%	20,453,245
LIN	Lindian Resources	0.105	18%	27,317,098
LNU	Linius Tech Limited	0.007	40%	3,656,816
LYN	Lycaonresources	0.51	16%	412,001
MEI	Meteoric Resources	0.0165	18%	51,038,877
NZS	New Zealand Coastal	0.005	25%	8,082,566
PVE	Po Valley Energy Ltd	0.038	19%	2,599,216
RMI	Resource Mining Corp	0.125	25%	2,333,509
SW1	Swift Networks Group	0.022	16%	579,425
SXG	Southern Cross Gold	0.7	19%	13,990,049
VOL	Victory Offices Ltd	0.042	17%	881,500
XST	Xstate Resources	0.003	20%	343,348
XTC	Xantippe Res Ltd	0.0105	17%	38,387,209

CardieX (ASX:CDX) is the stand-out trophy-hoisting success for the day, bolting to the top of the charts with a monstrous ~63% leap.

We mentioned CardieX at lunchtime – we knew when they’d only put on ~40% – and the story remais the same, with its continued rocket ride is happening largely on the back of a hugely positive independent evaluation by MST Access reaffirmed its value at $1.50, 5 times higher than where it was when the MST took a look at it.

TODAY’S BIGGEST SMALL CAP LOSERS

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

Scroll or swipe to reveal table. Click headings to sort.

Code	Company	Last	%	Volume
AD1	AD1 Holdings Limited	0.014	-22%	3,981,482
AJX	Alexium Int Group	0.026	-13%	2,571,429
AMD	Arrow Minerals	0.003	-14%	1,879,346
AQX	Alice Queen Ltd	0.005	-17%	2,616,000
AUN	Aurumin	0.155	-14%	753,299
BEX	Bikeexchange Ltd	0.019	-30%	4,416,241
BIT	Biotron Limited	0.072	-13%	6,432,230
BOD	BOD Australia	0.12	-17%	319,194
CCE	Carnegie Cln Energy	0.001	-33%	2,527,399
ERG	Eneco Refresh Ltd	0.021	-22%	495,810
FFX	Firefinch Ltd	0.345	-64%	53,193,088
GEN	Genmin	0.185	-12%	1,325,302
HFY	Hubify Ltd	0.042	-16%	73,002
IVO	Invigor Group Ltd	0.045	-21%	138,621
KLR	Kaili Resources Ltd	0.014	-13%	423
LNY	Laneway Res Ltd	0.004	-20%	485,414
MEB	Medibio Limited	0.003	-14%	1,050,000
OAU	Ora Gold Limited	0.012	-14%	157,201
RCW	Rightcrowd	0.072	-20%	40,432
RMX	Red Mount Min Ltd	0.007	-13%	2,695,445
SCLDB	Schrole Group Ltd	0.3	-12%	16,880
W2V	Way2Vatltd	0.059	-16%	959,332
WRK	Wrkr Ltd	0.015	-21%	933,656
WWI	West Wits Mining Ltd	0.025	-14%	7,921,210
ZMMDE	Deferred Settlement	0.075	-29%	15,573

Aurumin Limited (ASX: AUN) joined the list of unlikely diggers that failed to move with the market today, despite announcing that its 100% owned Mt Palmer Project is looking like a winner.

Its recent orientation reverse circulation program showed up to 370ppm Li, returned across multiple holes, and XRF results also returned anomalous pathfinder elements commonly used for targeting lithium mineralisation, including tantalum, (up to 105ppm Ta), rubidium (up to 3,612ppm Rb) and niobium (up to 79ppm Nb).

But that news wasn’t enough to stop it falling nearly 14%, down to $0.155, even though it had all the magic words in the press release.

Meanwhile, Biotron (ASX:BIT) has slid deeper into the doldrums, down ~13% today, despite positive news for the company via the US FDA late last week that flagged its lead antiviral drug BIT225 as a potential treatment of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) infection in adults.

ANNOUNCEMENTS YOU MAY’VE MISSED

The therapeutic antibody development peeps at Patrys (ASX:PAB) landed a $250,000 cash injection from the inaugural Clinical Accelerator fund of Cure Brain Cancer Foundation to support research on potential therapeutic applications for Patrys’ PAT-DX1 and PAT-DX3 deoxymabs in the treatment and management of brain cancers – great news in anyone’s books.

And last up, Lycaon Resources Ltd (ASX:LYN) has been out shopping, bringing home an agreement to acquire the Bow River and Salt Lick) nickel, copper, cobalt ± PGE Projects in the East Kimberley region of Western Australia. Lycaon says the area covers two known nickel-copper-cobalt sulphide prospects, and both intrusives are sulphide-bearing and similar in style and setting to Panoramic Resources’ Savannah mine.