Market highlights and 5 ASX small caps to watch on Tuesday

The ASX 200 is set to open 4% lower today
Wall Street crashes following higher than expected inflation report on Friday
Bitcoin plunges 13%

The ASX is poised to crash by more than 4% at the open this morning after another plunge in Wall Street overnight.

Nearly every S&P 500 stock was down on Monday as benchmarks indexes fell across the board – the S&P by 3.9%, the Dow by 2.8% and Nasdaq by 4.7%.

It follows another similar plunge on Friday after the release of a higher than forecast US CPI print of 8.6%, the highest level in 40 years.

The US Fed meets on Wednesday (US time) to figure out what to do with spiralling inflation. The central bank has already communicated that it will at least raise rates by 50bps.

Wall Street has now entered into a bear market, and some experts fear it might turn into an all-out recession.

“We’re closer to the lows than the highs,” Jeremy Siegel, a finance professor at Wharton School told CNBC.

“I actually think that the market is already discounting a recession – it’s being priced to that,” he said.

Another expert reckons that the Fed could hike rates much more than expected.

“Wall Street is facing a plethora of negative headlines, but the problem is that until we see a deterioration with credit conditions and market functioning, the Fed has the green light to tighten as much as possible to get inflation under control,” said Oanda market analyst Edward Moya.

Meanwhile, Bitcoin has crashed by 13% in the last 24 hours, and is now trading at US$22,850.

It’s been a tough few days for crypto traders as the market follows Wall Street into the red.

Traders also became jittery after crypto lending company Celsius Network paused all account withdrawals and transfers, with Binance also pausing its Bitcoin withdrawals for several hours.

The market panic also put the currency markets into turmoil. As Beijing grapples with another “ferocious” outbreak, the Aussie dollar has sunk to US69.3c from US71c just a few days ago.

5 ASX small caps to watch today

Duratec (ASX:DUR)
Duratec has secured a major contract with the Department of Defence to manage the delivery of supporting facilities and infrastructure works for offshore marine vessels. The project works will be undertaken at HMAS Coonawarra in Darwin until March 2023, and is worth $16.5 million.

Halo Food (ASX:HLF)
Halo has been exclusively awarded the Coles private label contract totalling approximately $9.5m over two years. The contract includes multiple powdered products in various pack formats, flavours and sizes, and is in addition to the $3.3m per annum Coles contract already secured by Halo in November last year.

AdAlta (ASX:1AD)
A first European patent relating to AdAlta’s lead program, AD-214, has been granted by the European Patent Office. The grant means AD-214 now has patent protection until 2036 in the eight largest pharmaceutical markets in the world: US, Japan, China, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and UK.

Bastion Minerals (ASX:BMO)
Preliminary gold results received from the recent sampling program at Capote in Chile include maximum gold value of 48.6g/t Au (average 3.3g/t Au). Bastion says these new channel samples provide confidence in the grade and potential width of the key mineralised veins across the project. Drilling will commence tomorrow, 15 June 2022.

Westgold Resources (ASX:WGX)
Westgold announced May 2022 as a record month of gold production from its Bryah and Murchison operations. After a bumper April that delivered 23,969oz, gold production of 25,100oz in May sets a record from the Bryah and Murchison assets.