Market Highlights and 5 ASX Small Caps to watch on Wednesday

Wall Street slips as Bitcoin plunges

The US stock markets slipped after coming back from the long weekend Labour day holiday.

The Dow Jones fell by 0.76%, the S&P 500 was down by 0.34%, but the tech heavy Nasdaq inched higher by 0.07%.

Rises in big tech stocks like Apple, Amazon and Netflix helped the Nasdaq avoid falling into the red.

European stocks also slipped slightly, ahead of the ECB rates policy decision on Thursday.

Meanwhile, Bitcoin slumped by as much as 17% overnight, before recovering slightly to settle at US$46,700 at 8:00am AEST this morning, from US$51,900 on Tuesday.

The sharp declines coincided with the day El Savador became the first country to adopt BTC as an official legal tender.

El Savador’s President meanwhile, was defiant…

It appears the discount is ending 🥲

Thanks for the dip @IMFNews. We saved a million in printed paper.

El Salvador now holds 550 bitcoin.#BitcoinDay #BTC 🇸🇻

— Nayib Bukele 🇸🇻 (@nayibbukele) September 7, 2021

In other markets, oil prices fell by around 1%, while spot iron ore rose by almost 5% to US$137.85 / tonne.

On Tuesday, data showed that Chinese exports and imports grew faster than estimated in August, easing concerns about issues in global supply chain.

ASX 200 to open lower on Wednesday

The ASX 200 looks set to open lower his morning, with futures markets (September contracts) pointing slightly down by 0.41% at 8:30am AEST.

Yesterday, the Aussie benchmark finished 0.02% higher after falling by as much as 0.5% in the morning trade.

Resources was the biggest laggard, declining 0.81% but Energy gained 0.78% – only usurped by Telcos, which gained 0.94%.

5 ASX small caps to watch today

Pentanet (ASX:5GG)
The Perth-based telco says it has completed the rollout of the GeForce NOW cloud gaming infrastructure in Australia. The initial GeForce NOW RTX servers are now fully installed in Perth and Sydney, with the first beta sessions for GeForce successfully taking place from the Perth infrastructure.

Synlait Milk (ASX:SM1)
The company has commenced a consultation process to update its organisational structure. The proposed new structure could see Synlait’s overall headcount being reduced by approximately 15%, and generate potential annual savings of between $10m ~ $12m. Synlait will announce its full year results on Monday, September 27th, where it has flagged an estimated loss of between $20m ~ $30m.

Global Energy Ventures (ASX:GEV)
The oil and gas company has secured a grant from the WA government of up to $300k excluding GST. The funds will support the evaluation study of exporting green hydrogen from Gascoyne to the Asia-Pacific, utilising its compressed hydrogen shipping solution.

AssetOwl (ASX:AO1)
The property-focused software company has signed its first customer in Victoria, heralding the commencement of its east coast expansion. Victoria is Australia’s second largest rental market with approximately 645,000 private rental households. AO1 says its Pirsee software is generating a lot of interest from Victorian property agents.

Nexus Minerals (ASX:NXM)
The company announced the Templar project drilling in WA has pointed to a significant new discovery. Results from thirteen new holes include: 10m @ 5.64g/t Au (within 23m @ 2.85g/t Au from 132m); and [email protected]/tAu (incl.4m @ 9.24g/tAu from 90m).