Market highlights and 4 ASX small caps to watch today

Overseas Markets Highlights

On Friday, the Dow closed 1.5% lower, S&P500 48% lower, and the Nasdaq was higher by 0.56%.

Big tech stocks recovered with Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Alphabet posting gains. This was after the tech heavy Nasdaq had its worst week of trading since October 2020.

The rally in tech stocks was mainly buoyed by the 10-year US treasury yield finally easing to 1.45%, after rising to as much as 1.61% last Thursday. Tech stocks are sensitive to rising yields because their valuations (which are heavily dependent on future earnings) are discounted back steeper when interest rates are higher.

Meanwhile the Aussie dollar is easing to US$0.77 at 7:45am AEDT, with gold and oil also decreasing slightly.

Bitcoin falls to US$44,000 level as Bill Gates sounds off a warning

Bitcoin meanwhile has fallen to US$44,375 at 7:45am AEDT.

This comes as Bill Gates warned that people with less money than Elon Musk should “probably watch out”.

“Elon has tons of money and he’s very sophisticated, so I don’t worry that his bitcoin will sort of randomly go up or down,” Gates told Bloomberg.

“I do think people get bought into these manias who may not have as much money to spare. My general thought would be that if you have less money than Elon, you should probably watch out,” he added.

Earning seasons on the ASX

Cinema group Vista (ASX: VGL) reported a full year loss after tax of $NZ56.7 million.

Apple store specialist Story-i (ASX:SRY) has posted a $1.17 million loss for the half, a 218% drop on pcp.

Space enabled data company Kleos (ASX: KSS) also reported a $4.86 million loss for the half, down by 39% on pcp.

E-learning platform Retech (ASX:RTE) announced that its net profit is up by 2% to $11.42 million.

4 ASX small caps to watch today

Metals X (ASX:MLX)
Tin miner Metals X reported a profit of $18.7 million for the first half, after a $61.6 million loss in the pcp. This came as the tin price was higher than a year earlier, as well as higher sales.

Lucas Group (ASX:AJL)
Lucas has signifiicant oil and gas investments in the UK. The company reported a $9.9 million net profit or the first half compared to $10.3 million loss in the pcp. The profit came on the back of strong earnings from its drilling operations.

Babylon Pump (ASX:BPP)
The resource industry services provider reported a 31% increase in revenue to $10.3 million for the first half. Although EBITDA loss came in at $0.66 million, most of it was the result of non-recurring items.

Calix (ASX:CXL)
Kiln technology company announced that its technology is to be piloted in novel energy storage system with Swedish company Salt X. The deal will see Salt X build a pilot scale 200kW electric powered direct separation reactor (eDS) in Sweden to be used as a charger in its energy storage system.