Market Highlights and 5 ASX Small Caps to watch on Monday

Wall Street mixed on soft US job numbers

US stock markets were mixed on Friday after US employment data missed expectations. The US economy added only 235,000 jobs in August, vs over 1 million jobs in July.

The Dow Jones fell by 0.21%, the S&P 500 was down 0.03%, but tech heavy Nasdaq climbed by 0.21%.

Last week, Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell said the US economy was in a recovery, but did not table a schedule for tapering or quantitative easing. The weak job numbers have now cast a doubt on that schedule.

In other markets, oil prices fell by 1%, while spot iron ore rose by 4% on Friday.

Iron ore up US$5.35 a tonne or 3.8% to US$145.05 a tonne.
Over the week, iron ore fell by US$14.00 a tonne or 8.8%.

— CommSec (@CommSec) September 5, 2021

To cryptos, where Bitcoin is trading above US$50k to US$51,700 level at 8:00am AEST, from the US$47,000 level on Friday.

ASX 200 to open higher on Monday

The ASX 200 looks set to open higher his morning, with futures markets (September contracts) pointing slightly up by 0.07% at 8:30am AEST.

On Friday, the Aussie benchmark rose by 0.5%, and was 1.4% higher for the week.

Set to list at 11am (EST) today is HealthCo Healthcare Wellness (ASX:HCW), which owns and manages a portfolio of commercial health and wellness real estate assets.

After losing 70% of its share price value this year, Nuix (ASX:NXL) will be removed from the the ASX 200 index when the Exchange makes its quarterly rebalance on Sep 20.

This week will see the RBA convene and announce its rates and monetary policies.

5 ASX small caps to watch today

Douugh (ASX:DOU)
The fintech play says it has partnered with consumer P2P mobile payment app Beam It, to fast track the growth of its Goodments by Douugh app. Beam It currently has over 1.5m registered users in Australia, and will promote the Goodments app to its customer base.

CV Check (ASX:CV1)
After solid FY21 results, the job candidate screening company says it’s poised for another strong year in FY22. The company said that its commercialised technology as well as a strong balance sheet will underpin the business in the year ahead.

Boss Energy (ASX:BOE)
The company says that its front-end engineering and design (FEED) process at its Honeymoon Project is running well ahead of schedule. Boss now expects to complete this work early in the new calendar year, as it positions itself to become Australia’s next uranium producer.

Greenvale Mining (ASX:GRV)
The company announced it’s about to commence IOCG (iron oxide, copper and gold) drilling in mid September at “Twin Peaks” in the Georgina Basin. Site preparations have been completed, as it targets an initial four diamond holes drilling across the Eastern and Western targets.

Antipa Minerals (ASX:AZY)
Assays received from the diamond-tail drill hole at its 100% owned Minyari deposit show significant gold and copper intersection to 362 metres. This includes 362.0m at 1.4 g/t gold and 0.16% copper from 230.0m down hole.