Market Highlights and 5 ASX Small Caps to watch on Friday

Wall Street higher as US jobless claims plunged

All the three major US benchmarks rose overnight, after US jobless claims fell to a new pandemic low.

The Dow Jones rose by 0.38%, the S&P 500 by 0.52% to a fresh record high, while tech-focused Nasdaq climbed 0.13%.

After being fined US$70 million yesterday, trading platform Robinhood has now filed for an IPO listing on Nasdaq under the ticker HOOD.

Interestingly, the public document pointed to Dogecoin as being a major “risk factor” for Robinhood, and that its net revenue “earned from cryptocurrency may slow or decline if the market for Dogecoin deteriorates”.

In other markets, oil prices have surged above US$75 a barrel after OPEC and a group of Russian producers met and delayed a decision on what to do next with the surging demand from the industrialised world.

Bitcoin is currently trading at US$33,600 level at 8am AEST, from the US$34,700 level on Thursday.

BTC had a wild first half of the year, rising to its highest level of US$65,000 in April, before plunging 48% from those highs to today’s level.

ASX 200 set to inch lower on Friday

The ASX200 looks set to dip slightly at the open, with futures markets (September contracts) pointing down by 0.03 per cent at 8:30am AEST this morning.

It wasn’t a happy start to the new financial year for Australia’s bourse, which lost nearly two thirds of one per cent on Thursday.

Almost every sector was in the red yesterday, with consumer stocks and industrials both reporting retreats of over 1%. The only sector in the green was resources, which rose 0.08%.

Australia has reportedly signed the global tax floor initiative of 15 per cent initiated by the G7 that could be worth $3 billion in extra tax revenues.

The new tax framework will see a partial exemption for mining companies, but also allows the government to go after big tech companies.

According to the ASX website, there will be five IPO listing today, including that of $900 million 29 Metals (ASX:29M).

5 ASX small caps to watch today

Cyclopharm (ASX:CYC)
The medtech company reported a 45 per cent increase in first half FY21 revenues to $8.1 million, on the back of strong sales from its Technegas generator and Patient Administration Sets product. The company expects first half dividend to be maintained at 0.5 cents per share.

Zimi Limited (ASX:ZMM)
The IoT and smart home tech company has reported first revenue from purchase orders of 30,000 lighting devices from three companies. The total purchase order is worth over $1.7 million in revenue.

Beyond International (ASX:BYI)
The television and digital content company is expecting a significant improvement in both operational EBITDA and EBIT for the full year ending 30 June. The EBITDA is expected to be in the range of $5.8m to $6.0m compared with $1.2m reported in the prior year, and EBIT is expected to be in the range of $1.2m to $1.4m compared with a loss of $2.m reported in the prior year.

Piedmont Lithium (ASX:PLL)
The company is set to acquire 9.47 per cent of London-listed Ironridge Resources (IRR) and a 50 per cent interest in IRR’s Ghana-based lithium portfolio. The deal will support PLL’s staged growth plans for lithium hydroxide production.

Imugene (ASX:IMU)
The immune oncology company announced that City of Hope has received FDA Investigational New Drug (IND) approval to initiate a Phase I clinical trial of its oncolytic virotherapy candidate, CHECKvacc. The FDA approval allows Imugene and City of Hope to start patient recruitment and dosing in a Phase 1 clinical trial for triple-negative breast cancer patients.