Market highlights and 5 ASX small caps to watch on Monday

US stocks extend loss, tech regains

The Dow Jones and S&P 500 extended their losses on Friday, falling by 0.71% and 0.06% respectively.

The tech-heavy NASDAQ gained by 0.76%.

Banking stocks dragged the market lower, after Fed chair Jerome Powell said he would not be extending the temporary relief to the exemption that let banks exclude Treasuries with the central bank from a calculation called the Supplementary Leverage Ratio. This exemption will lapse on 31 March.

10-year yields remained at around 1.73% level. JP Morgan’s Jamie Dimon said that he wouldn’t “touch 10-year Treasury with a 10-foot pole at these rates”, and that “treasuries are a bad investment right now.”

Bitcoin held steady at US$57,700 at 8am AEDT, after briefly rising to US$60,000 last Friday.

Closer to home

Troubled casino operator, Crown Resorts (ASX:CWN), has received an $8 billion takeover offer from US investment manager Blackstone at $11.85 a share. Crown closed at $9.86 on Friday.

Telstra (ASX:TLS) is set to split off into four subsidiaries in a major restucturing. The company will seek shareholder approval in October.

The much-awaited listing of labour-for-hire platform, Airtasker, will be delayed until tomorrow after an ASX “human error and oversight”. The company had raised $255 million at 65 cents a share in the IPO.

5 ASX small caps to watch today

XState Resources (ASX:XST)
The oil and gas company has just acquired a further 10% working interest in the Red Earth oil producing asset in Alberta, Canada. Xstate now holds a total of 25% interest in the asset. The Red Earth assets consists of six oilfields and associated infrastructure, located 450km north of Edmonton.

Trigg Mining (ASX:TMG)
Announced a set of outstanding high-grade air-core drilling results which confirmed extensive high-grade brine system at Lake Throssell Sulphate of Phosphate project. 253 brine samples were submitted for assay, returning high-grade results of up to 5,800mg/L potassium (12.93kg/m3 SOP), with an average grade of 4,488mg/L potassium (10.01kg/m3 SOP). This average grade aligns with the upper end of the previously reported Exploration Target.

Corazon Mining ASX:CZN)
Announced that drilling has commenced at its priority south pipe target at Lynn Lake nickel sulphide project in Canada. The South Pipe is a significant conductive anomaly located on ground recently acquired by Corazon last November, and is the highest priority target of the company’s current phase of drilling.

Euro Manganese (ASX:EMN)
The mining company announced a $30 million private placement listing, which is over-subscribed. Proceeds will be used to further advance the Chvaletice manganese project, allowing completion of all site and technical work required for a final investment decision expected in 2022.

InteliCare (ASX:ICR)
Aged care tech InteliCare said it has developed a new suite of analytics which provides significantly enhanced functional capacity to its market leading InteliLiving remote care package. The company is aiming to increase market share by leveraging its IoT platform and AI.