Market Highlights and 5 ASX Small Caps to watch on Tuesday

• ASX to open extend losses as Wall Street crashes again
• Oil prices plunge 9% as EU ban on Russian oil fails to gain approval
• Aussie dollar plunges below US70c

The ASX 200 is set to extend its losses for a third consecutive day, following another selloff on Wall Street overnight.

At 8am AEDT, the ASX 200 June futures contract is pointing down by 1.85%.

Negative sentiment continues to engulf markets, with all major US stockmarket indices collapsing overnight. The S&P 500 plunged by 3.2%, the Dow by 1.99%, and tech heavy Nasdaq by 4.29%.

Over the last few days, investors have been scared away over the potential of a faster Fed rate hike along with concerns over China’s economic slowdown.

A stronger than expected US jobs report on Friday did no favours, as the market now fully anticipates a faster Fed hike with Wednesday (US time)’s key CPI data looming.

Apart from tech, US energy stocks were also routed overnight as oil prices tumbled by 9% over concerns of a demand slowdown from China.

The EU parliament has also abandoned its plan to sanction Russia’s oil, as Hungary opposed the move. Brent crude is now trading at US$105 a barrel.

Meanwhile, the Aussie dollar has plunged to below the key support level of US70c. At 8.30am AEDT, the AUDUSD is trading at US69.5c. The massive selloff comes as investors weigh what a China slowdown could mean for Aussie commodities.

To cryptos where Bitcoin also suffered an epic fall of almost 10%, and is trading at US$31,000. For the week, BTC is down by 20%.

The crypto coin is now down 50% from its peak of US$69k in November last year.

Not sure how much he owns but…

If I die under mysterious circumstances, it’s been nice knowin ya

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 9, 2022

5 ASX small caps to watch today

Beamtree Holdings (ASX:BMT)
Beamtree won a five-year contract worth US$7m or US$1.4m annually with Ampath, a leading provider of pathology services in South Africa. Under the terms, Beamtree will provide its RippleDown software to automate clinical and administrative process for Ampath’s healthcare business.

Imugene (ASX:IMU)
Imugene announced it has received Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC) approval to commence a Phase 2 clinical trial of its immunotherapy candidate, HER-Vaxx, in Australia. The nxextHERIZON clinical trial is designed to assess the safety and efficacy of HER-vaxx in combination with chemotherapy or pembrolizumab, to treat tumours that over- express the HER-2/neu receptor.

Altamin Ltd (ASX:AZI)
The minerals explorer will recommend shareholders to reject a takeover offer by VBS Exchange of 9.5c a share. At Monday’s close, the AZI share price was trading at 9.6c.

Metals Australia (ASX:MLS)
Drilling at the Manindi Project in WA to test down-plunge extensions of the Kultarr zinc deposit has intersected a 68m zone of massive to disseminated zinc-copper sulphide mineralisation. The drilling is being done in parallel with the separate 3,500m drilling program testing lithium bearing pegmatites.

Great Boulder Resources (ASX:GBR)
Results from a recently-completed survey at Mulga Bill in WA have identified large chargeable zones that are interpreted to be disseminated sulphide bodies beneath the central 3km strike of Mulga Bill. These zones correlate very closely with the gravity anomaly identified by GBR’s survey last year.