All the interesting news was in the US, where President Joe Biden managed to keep most of Congress awake in his first address to a joint session.

Almost.

Biden’s main focus was of course, how the Democrats would guide the US out of the pandemic and towards economic recovery, focusing on jobs, infrastructure, childcare, and education.

The spending program is yuge – $US4 trillion. But the most important details is who’s going to pay for it?

Not anyone earning under $US400K a year, Biden reiterated. That’s up from Obama’s 2008 promise to spare families earning less than $US250K.

So it’ll be the 1 per cent, as usual. And as an extra hit to corporations, Biden dared Congress to raise the $7.25 an hour minimum wage. An average range of estimates has it most likely hitting around the $US10 mark, which seems more than fair as it hasn’t been raised since 2009.

 

ANNOUNCEMENTS YOU MAY HAVE MISSED

– Today’s biggest winner – by some margin – was shopping rewards platform Rewardle Holdings (ASX:RXH). It doubled at the opening bell, after announcing a binding terms sheet to provide services to Splitpay — an Australian-based BNPL platform targeting the UK and European markets.

Rewardle will assist SplitPay with management consulting services during an initial two-year term and continue “exploring long-term strategic partnership opportunities”.

Cash-wise, it’s worth an estimated average of $10K a month to Rewardle, with a $5K a month minumum retainer.

– SplitPay also has a strategic partnership with Novatti (ASX:NOV), which in turn took another path to the high BNPL road today. The fintech rose around 25% to 0.61 cents after announced it has been selected by Afterpay (ASX:APT) for delivery of the buy now, pay later giant’s payment card program in New Zealand.

Novatti will receive project setup, monthly recurring and possibly transaction-based fees over the course of the three-year agreement.

– Tiny $23m WA mineral explorer Matsa Resources (ASX:MAT) got a nice 11% bump after announcing a 27% increase in mineral resources at its Lake Carey Gold Project, up to 654,000 @ 2.6g/t Au from 515,000oz in December.

It also built less significantly on gold resources at its Devon and Fortitude hubs. Matsa is also exploring addition gold targets at Devon, and will begin exploration drilling there in early May.

– Zimi Ltd (ASX:ZMM) rose nearly 30% after announcing it had received a purchase order from national retailer Beacon Lighting for its Powermesh devices, worth more than $500,000. Not bad considering it started today with a market cap around $10 million.

The devices will be sold under the Lucci Powermesh brand and will also “appear on an upcoming popular renovation TV show”. Excite!

TRADING HALTS

Friday: 

Raiz (ASX:RZI) – capital raising
Hexagon Energy Materials (ASX:HXG) – capital raising
Firstwave Cloud Technology (ASX:FCT) – capital raising
Access Innovation Holdings (ASX:AIM) – capital raising

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