Market Highlights and 5 ASX Small Caps to watch on Monday

Wall Street had its best month of the year

US stocks surged higher on Friday and set new records, as Wall Street closed out the best month since November 2020.

All three stock benchmarks closed at highest levels ever – the Dow Jones up by 0.25%, S&P 500 by 0.19%, and tech-heavy Nasdaq by 0.33%.

The broader market rose despite Amazon and Apple, two of the biggest companies, missing their Q3 earnings estimates and falling by 2% each.

In other markets, the spot iron ore price keeps falling and was down a further 5.7% on Friday to US$106.75/t.

The debt crisis faced by Chinese property firms remains a threat to the iron ore price, with some analysts predicting it to fall below US$100/t in 2022.

To cryptos, where Bitcoin is back up over US$60k, and is trading at US$61,000 at 8am AEDT, from US$60,900 on Friday.

Following Facebook’s rebrand to Meta last week to create a virtual so-called metaverse, the price of Decentraland’s mana cryptocurrency has also surged by 300%.

“Tokenized gaming has really taken off as a trend in the last few weeks, and Decentraland is by far the most established of the bunch,” said Mati Greenspan, CEO of Quantum Economics.

ASX200 to open higher on Monday

The ASX200 looks set to open higher this morning, with futures markets (December contracts) pointing up by 0.93% at 8:30am AEDT.

The Australian bourse dived into the red on Friday, sending the benchmark ASX200 tumbling 0.84% to 7,350.7 points for the week. Investor attention is increasingly turning to the bond market, after the RBA refrained from buying three-year government bonds.

Later today, economics data releases include October’s national home prices and ANZ job advertisements.

On the IPO front, set to list at 11am AEST is men’s underwear retailer Step One Clothing (ASX:STP) followed at 12:30pm AEST by financial services provider Judo Capital Holdings (ASX:JDO).

In large cap news this morning, Westpac (ASX:WBC) reported a cash profit of $5.35 billion for the full year of FY21, and has announced a $3.5 billion off-market buyback.

5 ASX small caps to watch today

AFT Pharma (ASX:AFP)
The US FDA has accepted the New Drug Application (NDA) for Maxigesic IV, AFP’s intravenous form of its patented pain relief medicine. The FDA filing along with licensing of Maxigesic IV to Hikma Pharmaceuticals have triggered milestone payments for AFP of US$3.6 million, which will be realised in the first half.

Oilex (ASX:OEX)
The company granted a well management contract to a consortium comprising Manan Oilfield Services and Bedrock Drilling for its Cambay field development in India. But Oilex says all project plans are subject to securing the necessary funding and Government of India ratification of the transfer of 55% participating interest from GSPC to Oilex.

Accelerate Resources (ASX:AX8)
Three exploration licence applications have been lodged covering prospective areas in the East Pilbara region. These applications have targeted potential lithium, tin and tantalite mineralisation, with tenements located near existing lithium occurrences and areas active in lithium exploration.

Lykos Metals (ASX:LYK)
Encouraging results from first-pass geochemical sampling at LYK’s 100% owned Sockovac nickel-cobalt and Sinjakovo copper exploration projects in the Balkans have been reported. Nickel: 40 samples over 1,000ppm Ni including up to 4,960ppm (0.5% Ni). Cobalt: 47 samples over 100ppm Co including up to 254ppm.

Carawine Resources (ASX:CWX)
Assay results reported from the first four RC drill holes at Tropicana North returned multiple new gold targets. Results include 6m @ 1.12g/t Au from 64m, including 1m @ 4.22g/t Au.

At Stockhead we tell it like it is. While Accelerate Resources is a Stockhead advertiser, it did not sponsor this article.