Lunch Wrap: Miners fall behind as RBA race enters the final straight

• ASX stalls on Cup Day nerves
• Miners fade as iron ore price slips
• Property stocks rally as RBA looms

The ASX was off by around 0.79% by lunchtime in the east on Tuesday, with investors looking nervously toward the Reserve Bank and Governor Michele Bullock’s 2.30pm press conference.

Overnight, the mood was mixed. The Nasdaq rose 0.6%, S&P 500 added 0.2%, while the Dow slipped 0.4%.

Back home, 10 out of 11 ASX sectors limped out the gates on Melbourne Cup Day.

The race starts at 3pm AEDT, about half an hour after the RBA crosses its own finish line with today’s rate decision.

REA Group’s Eleanor Creagh reckons Bullock will hold fire at 3.6% today, calling last week’s CPI strong print a “watchful pause”.

In stocks, miners and utilities were doing most of the early damage this morning, dragging the benchmark down and leaving it on track for its fifth fall in six sessions.

Iron ore prices slipped another 1% overnight to about US$104.75 a tonne, and that was enough to wipe the shine off the big three.

Rio Tinto (ASX:RIO) dropped 2.2% and BHP (ASX:BHP) fell 1%.

If the miners had a rather rough morning, the utilities sector wasn’t exactly sparking either. It fell, thanks mostly to Origin Energy (ASX:ORG)’s 3% drop.

The one bright corner was real estate.

Investors seem to think that as long as the RBA doesn’t crash the party with another surprise hike, property can keep humming along.

Meanwhile, Aussie consumer confidence took another knock, with data today showing that it slid 1.3% to 84.5 as inflation expectations jumped back above 5%.

ASX LEADERS

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

True North Copper (ASX:TNC) has stretched its Mt Oxide copper discovery to more than 500 metres of strike after strong new drilling results along the Aquila Trend in northwest Queensland.

The latest holes hit broad zones of shallow copper, cobalt and silver, including 103 metres at 0.53% Cu and 72 metres at 0.55% Cu, confirming the project’s scale and consistency.

The find now shapes as a large new copper system still open in all directions, with more assays to come and drilling continuing to test its full 1.3 km trend

ASX LAGGARDS

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

G8 Education (ASX:GEM) copped a 13% selloff after slashing profit guidance, blaming cost-of-living stress, weaker childcare demand, and rising regulatory costs.

Novonix (ASX:NVX) also tanked 11.5% after car giant Stellantis tore up its graphite supply deal. This was a major blow to a contract once worth more than 100,000 tonnes of synthetic graphite.

The split came after both sides failed to agree on product specs and production timelines, but Novonix says it’s still powering ahead with work for Panasonic and PowerCo, backed by a hefty US government loan to scale its Tennessee plant.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

Terra Metals’ (ASX:TM1) drilling has identified new sulphide reefs at the Southwest Prospect that are several times thicker than reefs at the Dante resource.

Cannindah Resources’ (ASX:CAE) latest fieldwork has stretched the Mt Cannindah system even further, with porphyry-style mineralisation now identified 400m to the northeast.\

Locksley Resources (ASX:LKY) has received early validation for its US critical minerals push from the US Export-Import Bank (EXIM), which issued a letter of interest to provide up to US$191m in financing for the Mojave antimony project.

True North Copper’s (ASX:TNC) drilling delivered major strike extensions at its Aquila prospect, lighting up the scale and growth potential of its Mt Oxide project in Queensland.

LAST ORDERS

Mont Royal is all set for public trading on the ASX tomorrow under the MRZ ticker after completing its merger with TSXV-listed Commerce Resources.

First up on the new Canadian-focused critical minerals power’s agenda is to develop a fully owned Ashram deposit in Quebec which stands as one of the largest monazite-dominant and carbonatite-hosted rare earth deposits in North America.

Ashram’s combined indicated and inferred resource stands beyond 200Mt at a grade of around 1.9% TREO after around $50m of investment by prior owners – with Mont Royal seeing a compelling opportunity to establish new supply into a market which is very keen on establishing new western sources.

RareX (ASX:REE) has welcomed Selina Hayes as a non-executive director to the board, strengthening the company’s strategic alignment with US interests, particularly in critical minerals.

Hayes leads Hayes Group International – a boutique advisory firm specialising in strategic access to US capital, policy stakeholders and African mining opportunities.

At Stockhead, we tell it like it is. While Mont Royal and RareX are Stockhead advertisers, they did not sponsor this article. 

This article does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.