Market Highlights and 5 ASX Small Caps to watch on Monday

ASX heads for gains to start the week

Aussie shares are set to open modestly higher this morning, with the ASX 200 April futures pointing up by 0.25% at 8am AEDT.

Last week, the benchmark ASX 200 closed the week 0.21% lower.

Wall Street finished mixed on Friday – with the S&P 500 down and the Dow modestly up, but tech heavy Nasdaq fell sharply by over 1%.

Megacap tech stocks like Alphabet and Tesla all fell, weighed down by the ongoing rise in US treasury yields.

The benchmark US 10- year yield spiked to a three-year high of 2.70%.

This came as the US Fed signalled last week that it will aggressively hike rates and reduce its massive bond holdings at $US95 billion a month starting in May.

Investors are now bracing for a possible recession with two potential outcomes – a soft landing engineered by the Fed or a much sharper economic contraction.

In other markets, Bitcoin has slipped and is trading at $42,484.75 at 8.30am AEDT, dropping from over US$43k on Friday.

Crucial economic data to watch out for this week include Australia’s unemployment rate for March, and the US inflation data.

5 ASX small caps to watch today

Rox Resources (AS:RXL)
More high grade results have been reported at the Youanmi Gold Project in WA. Latest results include: 4m @ 4.41g/t Au from 128m, and 4m @ 4.43g/t Au from 52m.

Ragusa Minerals (ASX:RAS)
The maiden drilling program targeting extension of neighbouring resource has commenced at Ragusa’s 100% owned Burracoppin Halloysite Project in WA. The company will target the open strike extensions of the adjacent halloysite-kaolin deposit, with the aim to delineate a JORC mineral resource.

FOS Capital (ASX:FOS)
Lighting company FOS says it has received orders valued at over $1.1 million to supply its VEKTA linear lighting products and associated items. VEKTA is a fully customised product line to meet architectural demand.

M8 Sustainable (ASX:M8S)
M8S has successfully completed the initial development and beta testing of its software platform for management of sales, marketing, orders and logistics. The new platform will be marketed through Access Waste in Western Australia as “WasteVantage”.

Smart Parking (ASX:SPZ)
Smart Parking has acquired 100% of NE Parking, a manually operated UK parking site management business. The purchase price was $520,000, and SPZ says that it represents a compelling strategic fit to build out scale in the UK parking management market.