Market Highlights and 5 ASX Small Caps to watch on Monday

ASX to rise as Wall Street rallies

ASX is set to open 0.6% higher today, extending its 3% gain from last week despite the ongoing conflict in Ukraine and the Covid situation in China.

On Wall Street, US stocks finished the week much higher — S&P 500 by 6.2%, the Dow by 5.3%, and the tech heavy Nasdaq by 8.59%.

Commodities also rallied on Friday. Spot iron ore is back above US$150 and closed at $US151.35 a tonne. Oil prices were up around 3% with Brent crude closing at US$107.93.

Meme stock AMC Entertainment (NYSE:AMC) raised eyebrows after it paid US$28m on Friday to buy out a defunct gold mining company, Hycroft, a business that AMC has no expertise in.

To cryptos where Bitcoin is down 2%, trading at US$41,271 at 8.30am AEDT.

Key market events this week include: US Fed chairman speech today, the RBA governor speech on Tuesday, and the emergency NATO and G7 meetings in Brussels on Thursday.

ASX IPO listing this week

According to the ASX, set to list this week are:

Norfolk Metals (ASX:NFL). The gold and uranium focussed explorer has the Roger River gold project in Tasmania, and the Orroroo uranium project in South Australia.It raised $5.5m at $0.20.

Pinnacle Minerals (ASX:PIM). This explorer is focused on kaolin, and holds the Bobalong and Holly projects in WA and the White Knight and Camel Lake projects in SA.

5 ASX small caps to watch today

Argenica Therapeutics (ASX:AGN)
Argenica’s Chief Scientific Officer, Prof Bruno Meloni, has published a study in the Journal of Thrombosis and Thrombolysis on Argenica’s lead asset, ARG-007. The publication confirms the superior proteolytic stability of the ARG-007 peptide.

Calidus Resources (ASX:CAI)
Calidus announced promising results from a stream sediment sampling program at its Blue Spec gold project in WA. Greenfields exploration has defined three areas with elevated gold of up to 326 ppb.

Battery Minerals (ASX:BAT)
Airborne electromagnetic survey has identified 32 conductors and several other modelled bedrock conductors considered prospective for copper and nickel mineralisation. Drilling is scheduled to commence following heritage clearance work in April-May 2022.

Lycaon Resources (ASX:LYN)
Primary gold mineralisation has been intersected within fresh rock including: 9m at 1.34g/t gold from 97m, and 10m at 1.13g/t gold from 72m.

Metals Australia (ASX:MLS)
Approximately half of the 3,500m reverse circulation (RC) drilling program at the Manindi Project is now completed. The initial drilling of the recently discovered foundation pegmatite has produced thick intersections of pegmatite with visible lithium bearing minerals.