Market Highlights and 5 ASX Small Caps to watch on Thursday

Wall Street rises; Haiti president is assassinated

All three key US benchmarks rose overnight, with Apple and Amazon amongst the best performers.

The Dow Jones was up by 0.30%, S&P 500 by 0.34%, and tech heavy Nasdaq by less than 0.01%.

Shocking news came out of Haiti after president Jovenel Moise was killed in his own home, and his wife flown to Florida for emergency gunshot surgery.

Meanwhile, oil prices fell again overnight, with Brent Crude falling by another 1.5%, after falling by 3% the previous day.

To cryptos, Bitcoin is currently trading at US$34,200 level at 8am AEST, from the US$33,900 level on Wednesday.

Crypto traders are split on whether the mid-July unlocks of Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) shares will dump, pump or nuthin’burger the price of Bitcoin.

Grayscale is the world’s largest digital asset manager, and its Grayscale Bitcoin Trust holds about 654,600 Bitcoin.

ASX 200 set to open higher on Thursday

The ASX200 looks set to open much higher at the open this morning, with futures markets (September contracts) pointing up by 1.33 per cent at 8:30am AEST.

Yesterday, the index also closed higher by 0.90 per cent, with Energy dropping 1.91% after gaining substantially in the past couple of days. All other sectors were in green, led by Tech which rose 2.82% and Consumer Staples which rose 1.86%.

In big cap news this morning, Macquarie Group (ASX:MQG) announced that its asset management arm has entered into a deal to acquire AMP Capital’s Global Equity and Fixed Income business for $185 million.

5 ASX small caps to watch today

EnviroSuite (ASX:EVS)
The environmental management tech company delivered another record quarter, posting $2.3 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR). EVS also said it’s expecting the strong demand and pipelines to continue growing into FY22.

Alkane Resources (ASX:ALK)
The company said its Tomingley Gold Operations has exceeded FY21 production guidance, which was upgraded after the March quarter. The FY21 gold production was 56,958oz (guidance 50,000oz to 55,000oz).

Dreadnought Resources (ASX:DRE)
The company said RC drilling has commenced at Tarraji-Yampi with a total of 19 holes for ~4,010m planned. Drilling updates and assay results are expected throughout July and August.

Payright (ASX:PYR)
The buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) company has entered into a partnership with Mint Payments to integrate Payright’s BNPL solution into its online payments processing system. Under the terms, Mint Payment’s 7,000+ merchants will have access to Payright’s BNPL solution for eCommerce and in-store transactions.

Lithium Australia (ASX:LIT)
The company announced that its subsidiary VSPC has dispatched high performance cathode materials to customers. The second-generation lithium manganese ferro phosphate (LMFP) cathode powder produced by VSPC has met industry performance and physical property specifications, according to LIT.