Market Highlights and 5 ASX Small Caps to watch on Tuesday

ASX to open higher as Wall Street returns a mixed bag
Oil prices are higher by 3%
El Salvador to host a Bitcoin summit with 44 other countries/institutions

Aussie shares are set to open higher this morning, despite a mixed bag of results on Wall Street overnight.

At 8am AEDT, the ASX 200 June futures is pointing up by 0.32%.

US shares closed mostly lower, with the tech heavy Nasdaq down by 1.2%. The S&P 500 lost 0.39% while the Dow rose a very modest 0.08%.

Microsoft ended up flat after announcing it would nearly double its salary budget to keep talent and help staff deal with rising inflation. The biggest mover overnight however was discount carrier Spirit Airlines, which rose by 13% after getting a takeover offer from JetBlue Airways.

Market sentiment has generally picked up since the Shanghai local government announced yesterday the city would go back to normal on 1st June. Shops will reopen in stages until then.

This came as China’s latest economic data showed the country’s economy has slumped due to the lockdowns, with both industrial output and retail spend crashing. Despite the weak data, the Chinese central bank has decided to keep its monetary policy unchanged.

Global oil markets welcomed the reopening news, with oil prices rising by 3% overnight. The benchmark Brent crude is currently trading at US$114 a barrel.

Meanwhile, after stabilising yesterday, Bitcoin has tumbled again by 3% and at 8.30am AEDT, was changing hands at US$30,120.

El Salvador’s BTC dip-buying “moonboi” president Nayib Bukele has announced that 32 central banks and 12 financial authorities are meeting in the Central American country to discuss Bitcoin.

Read all about it here on Coinhead.

5 ASX small caps to watch today

Cirrus Networks (ASX:CNW)
Cirrus has won a significant contract renewal with the ACT Government, to continue to provide all of their Cisco network maintenance and support. Cirrus was awarded the circa $4m Cisco SmartNET renewal contract after a comprehensive competitive tender process.

Nyrada (ASX:NYR)
Nyrada said the European Patent Office (EPO) has issued its intention to grant the company a patent application number for its cholesterol lowering drug, PCSK9. The patent will provide protection for Nyrada’s PCSK9 inhibitor technology until 2038.

Zelira Therapeutics (ASX:ZLD)
Zelira has published a white paper detailing the analysis of longitudinal, real-world data (RWD) generated from patients using HOPE. Results show that almost 70% of patients in the study cohort were rated by clinicians as having achieved at least ‘moderate’ therapeutic effect after 5 months on HOPE, which is a 100% organic tincture for people with autism spectrum disorder.

Navarre Minerals (ASX:NML) and Catalyst Metals (ASX: CYL)
Navarre and Catalyst announced continued strong drilling results at the Tandarra Gold Project in Victoria. Hole TND007 returned an outstanding gold intersection, including: o [email protected]/t Au from 66.4m, including 0.5m@831g/t.

Indiana Resources (ASX:IDA)
Indiana announced results of its auger calcrete geochemical sampling programme at the Central Gawler Craton Gold Project in South Australia. The company said multiple new targets were identified, with coherent, anomalous gold-in-calcrete results returned.