Wall Street loses early gains
US stocks sailed in positive territory throughout the day before fading away in the last hour of trading.
All three major benchmarks ended the day deep in the red – the S&P 500 by 1.1%, the Dow by 0.89%, and tech heavy Nasdaq by 1.30%.
Shares of home exercise equipment Peloton plunged by 24% after the company said it will halt the production of bikes and treadmills to curb costs. Peloton was one of the hottest stocks during the height of the pandemic, but has lost its shine since.
American Airlines (down 3%) reported earnings and is back to profitability, while Netflix will be reporting its results in the next hour.
The spot iron ore price extended its rally by +2.6% to $US133.65 a tonne, taking its gain in January to 10%.
Bitcoin finally saw some upward price action, and at 8.30am AEDT, BTC was higher by 2.5% and trading at US$42,500.
BTC may have been languishing around $42,000 for weeks but crypto projects aren’t having trouble raising money.
Stader Labs and Aleph.im both announced on Thursday (Friday, Australia time) that they’d raised millions from institutional investors.
Read the rest of that story here on Coinhead.
ASX 200 to open higher on Friday
Despite falls in the US, the ASX 200 index looks set to open higher this morning, with futures markets (February contracts) pointing up by 0.23% at 8:30am AEDT.
Yesterday, the local index managed to pull itself into positive territory in the last 30 minutes of trading, and closed 0.14% higher.
The benchmark would have slumped more today had it been not for the Mining sector, which rallied more than 3% and offset losses in other sectors.
Listing on the ASX today is Orexplore Technologies (ASX:OXT), spun out onto the ASX as part of its owner Swick’s (ASX:SWK) merger with DDH1 Drilling (ASX:DDH).
OXTs key business is a mobile x-ray machine which can scan a metre of drill core in 15 minutes. Orexplore will begin trading at noon AEDT.
In large cap news this morning, embattled forensics data company Nuix (ASX:NXL) reported its first half earnings. The company said revenue for H1 FY22 will come in the $82 – $85 million range (vs $85.3 million in H1 FY21), and it will make a loss of between $2.0 – $3.5 million, compared to the $16.6m loss in H1 FY21.
5 ASX small caps to watch today
Cogstate (ASX:CGS)
The brain specialist reported Q2 FY22 revenue of $10.8m, up 40% compared to previous corresponding period (pcp). Cogstate says there is a revenue backlog to the tune of $139.2m, which is a record result. Cogstate developes brain assessments to enable earlier clinical insights on patients.
XPon Technologies (ASX:XPN)
The cloud tech company added $2.1m in annual recurring revenue (ARR) during the quarter to finish with $13.1m as at December 2021, up 148% from December 2020. Q2 FY22 revenue of $3.2m, up 2% QoQ.
Limeade Inc (ASX:LME)
During the quarter, the employee well-being tech company recorded cash receipts from customers of $22m, up 55% versus pcp. Limeade has maintained its FY21 guidance of $50-53m in revenue; EBITDA loss of $5-8m, and net loss after tax of $7m to $10m.
Desert Metals (ASX:DM1)
Drilling on the 5 hole ~1100m RC program at Belele has commenced, eying sulphides associated with Volcanogenic Massive Sulphide (VMS) style mineralisation. The program is designed to test a modelled conductor, identified in airborne electromagnetic (EM) and confirmed by ground EM data.
Navarre Minerals (ASX:NML)
Diamond core assay results for a 17-hole program consisting of 4,580 metres of drilling at the St Arnaud Gold Project in western Victoria include: 1.0 metre at 13.9 grams per tonnes (g/t) gold within a broader zone of 25.3 metres at 1.7 g/t gold, and 4.6 metres at 3.2 g/t gold & 26.9 g/t silver.