Lunch Wrap: ASX eases back as Rio expands in the Pilbara and Cboe muscles in

• ASX slips as gold glitters and banks tumble
• Rio expands in the Pilbara, while Web Travel takes off
• Cboe gets the nod and ASX finally meets a rival

By lunchtime Tuesday in the east, the ASX was drifting 0.4% lower.

Overnight, Wall Street offered a mixed lead: the Dow slipped while the Nasdaq jumped nearly 1% after AMD threw a hand grenade into the chip wars.

The company signed a colossal deal with OpenAI – 6 gigawatts of GPUs and even a 10% equity kicker if targets are hit. The news sent its stock up more than 20% and briefly adding US$100 billion in market cap.

Back home, the local bourse didn’t catch the same high.

The telcos and consumer names led the retreat this morning.

Financials were also hit hard earlier after Commonwealth Bank’s (ASX:CBA) New Zealand arm, ASB, agreed to a $120 million settlement for loan breaches.

No admission of guilt, of course, just a quiet cheque and a “move along”. CBA’s shares were down as much as 0.80% before gaining.

Gold, meanwhile, ripped through another record, inching towards the once unthinkable US$4000 an ounce.

Rio Tinto (ASX:RIO) joined the charge, up 0.7%, after announcing a $1.1 billion Pilbara expansion with Mitsui and Nippon Steel.

It’s part of Rio’s US$20 billion capex plan to keep the Pilbara pipes full as older pits fade and China demands higher-grade ore.

In other large cap news, Web Travel Group (ASX:WEB) rallied 10% after flagging record FY26 earnings.

The Webjet spin-out has processed more than 5 million bookings and $3.17 billion in transactions – proof that global travel demand is overspending again

DroneShield (ASX:DRO), meanwhile, is putting $13 million into a new R&D site in Adelaide.

CEO Oleg Vornik says the site will build “world-leading” counter-drone tech, and for once, that’s not marketing fluff. Governments are actually buying.

Elsewhere, ASIC’s approval for Cboe Australia to start listing companies (not just ETFs) put the ASX (ASX:ASX) under pressure, down 2%.

The local monopoly finally has competition, which in market terms is like introducing a shark into a pool full of sleepy goldfish.

More choice for IPOs, and maybe there will finally be a bit of accountability for a bourse that’s been coasting on inertia for years.

ASX LEADERS

Today’s best performing stocks (including small caps) intraday:

Pure Foods Tasmania (ASX:PFT) has scored a big win, with its Tasmanian Pâté now stocked in around 700 Coles stores nationwide, up from roughly 300. Orders under the new deal have already shipped, with September volumes more than 10 times higher than the average month before the rollout. Based on that momentum, it’s expecting about $500k to $600k in annual sales from Coles alone, roughly a 15% lift on FY25 pâté revenue.

Acusensus (ASX:ACE) has landed its first major US state-wide contract, winning a US$22.6 million deal to deliver Connecticut’s new Automated Work Zone Speed Control program. The five-year contract kicks off in November, with full operations expected early 2026. It marks Acusensus’ biggest US deal yet and its third state-level program after Arkansas and Kentucky. The company will supply and operate up to 15 mobile enforcement units, handle image reviews, and issue violation notices.

Bryah Resources (ASX:BYH) has pulled its highest-grade antimony samples yet from the Bond Road prospect, including rock chips grading 57% antimony and 1.6g/t gold. Additional samples from the nearby Vail Road gold deposit returned up to 9.48g/t gold, confirming mineralisation right from surface. The results validate earlier exploration work and give Bryah the green light to kick off drilling at the Golden Pike project in November.

ASX LAGGARDS

Today’s worst performing stocks (including small caps) intraday:

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

Carnavale Resources (ASX:CAV) is ramping up, locking in $3m through a placement and opening a $4.09m rights issue to drive development at its Kookynie gold project.

VHM Limited (ASX:VHM) has received a US$200m project financing support offer from US EXIM Bank for its Goschen rare earths and mineral sands project in northwest Victoria.

Greenvale Energy’s (ASX:GRV) initial regional prospectivity analysis has identified the potential to make further discoveries at its Oasis uranium project in Queensland.

Neurizon (ASX:NUZ) is preparing to begin its ALS platform trial alongside Mass General Hospital after securing clearance from the FDA for its IND application.

333D (ASX:T3D) has signed a pilot collaboration with BioScan 360 to integrate blockchain into full-body MRI diagnostics.