Market highlights and 5 ASX small caps to watch on Thursday

Wall Street lower on the eve of inflation numbers

All major indices in the US closed lower on Wednesday, ahead of key May CPI to be released tonight (AEST time).

The Dow Jones fell by 0.44%, S&P 500 by 0.18%, and tech heavy Nasdaq by 0.09%.

Heavily shorted “meme” stocks continued to post gains on no news, with Aethlon Medical the latest stock to rocket, rising by 388% overnight.

Reddit also helped to lift shares in GEO Group and World Wrestling Entertainment stocks, which rose by 38% and 11% respectively.

In other markets, iron ore price rose as Chinese inventory fell to the lowest level since February.

Bitcoin price has rebounded to US$36,700 level at 8am AEDT from US$33,600 on Wednesday.

El Salvador has become the first country in the world to make BTC a legal tender.

Closer to home

The ASX 200 fell by 0.31% on Wednesday. Utilities was the best performing sector, up by 0.37 per cent while resources gained 0.25 per cent. All other sectors were in the red with the worst being consumer staples which lost 1.44 per cent.

5 ASX small caps to watch today

Pentanet (ASX:5GG)
The telecom company announced that 7pm AWST, yesterday (June 9) was the official start of the beta program for GeForce NOW, NVIDIA’s cloud-based game streaming service. This will be the first part of a three-stage rollout leading towards a national launch for the service planned for October.

OneView Healthcare (ASX:ONE)
The company announced that its largest customer in Australia, Epworth HealthCare, has has signed a 5-year contract extension. The Oneview platform is currently deployed across eight Epworth hospital locations in approximately 1,440 beds.

Hubify (ASX:HFY)
The telco and insurtech company has finalised the acquisition of two businesses in the telco/managed services space, namely ICNE and Sennah. Together, the acquisitions are expected to contribute ~$1.1m in EBITDA in FY22 post synergies.

Advanced Human Imaging (ASX:AHI)
The health technology company has signed a binding term sheet with Toronto-based Cubert, a company that developed FitTrack, a preventative health screening app. AHI’s technology will now be integrated into the FitTrack platform for a Q1 2022 release.

Hyperion Metals (ASX:HYM)
The mineral exploration company has secured the exclusive rights to the patented Granulation-Sintering-Deoxygenation (GSD) technology developed by Dr. Z. Zak Fang for producing zero carbon, low-cost spherical titanium powders.

The HAMR technology, which Hyperion acquired in February, when combined with GSD and Hyperion’s Titan Project, has the potential to provide a sustainable, zero carbon, low-cost and fully integrated titanium spherical metal powder supply chain in the US.