Market Highlights and 5 ASX Small Caps to watch on Wednesday

Wall Street little changed ahead of inflation data

Major indices in the US were little changed last night, ahead of Thursday’s US inflation report for May.

The Dow Jones fell by 0.09%, S&P 500 rose by 0.02%, while tech heavy Nasdaq was up by 0.31%.

Investors are anxiously awaiting the next rates move, especially as US Treasury Janet Yellen had already said that a slightly higher interest-rate environment would be a plus for the US.

Reddit meme stock Gamestop rose by 7% ahead of its earnings announcement tomorrow.

Meanwhile, major websites including Amazon, Reddit, Spotify, Ebay, and Pinterest went offline temporarily on Tuesday, due to a major outage at a service called Fastly. Fastly is an edge cloud computing provider that allows faster website load times across the world.

In other markets, global oil prices fell by around 1% while iron ore rose by 3%.

Bitcoin price, which sank to $US31,000 overnight, has recovered to US$33,600 level at 8am AEDT.

There are concerns over the security of cryptos after US officials managed to recover US$2.3m of the ransom paid to Colonial Pipeline hackers.

Closer to home

Game 1 of State of Origin kicks off tonight at 8:10pm AEST.

The ASX 200 rose by 0.15% on Tuesday, with the best sector being Tech which gained 1.45 per cent.

The Aussie market was boosted by NAB business conditions hitting a record high in May.

In big caps news this morning, buildings products manufacturer Brickworks (ASX:BKW) said it’s expecting record earnings from its property assets, following strong demand from the industrial estate markets in Australia and the US.

5 ASX small caps to watch today

Probiotec (ASX:PBP)
The pharmaceutical company announced an earnings guidance for FY21, and said that pro-forma revenues are expected to come in at $159m – $163m, a 50 per cent increase from its FY20 results. Based on this, EBITDA is expected to come in at $29 – $30m, a 75 per cent increase from FY20 actuals.

Perenti Global (ASX:PRN)
The mining services company announced its Botswana business, African Mining Services, was awarded a contract by ASX-listed Sandfire Resources (ASX:SFR). The contract, which has an estimated value of US$496 million (A$648 million), is the largest single operational contract for the new Motheo Project covering a period of 7 years and 3 months.

Piedmont Lithium (ASX:PLL)
The company announced that its Mineral Resources estimates have increased by 40 per cent for quartz (11.5Mt), feldspar (17.8Mt), and mica (1.6Mt). Piedmont also said it was in advanced discussions with prospective regional customers and strategic partners in the solar gas, engineered quartz, ceramic tile, and other industrial minerals markets.

OpenLearning (ASX:OLL)
The SaaS online education company has signed a 5-year platform SaaS agreement with the University of Wollongong, with a minimum contract value of $624k. The university is planning to utilise OpenLearning’s platform to deliver short courses and micro-credentials, as it expands its lifelong learning offering.

Stonehorse Energy (ASX:SHE)
The oil and gas exploration company said that the drilling of the Jewell well in Oklahoma has now been completed, with the well reaching a total depth of ~14,100 feet prior to tripping out of hole. Operations will continue on schedule with planned building of tank battery and separators on location to commence immediately .