Market highlights and 5 ASX small caps to watch on Wednesday

The ASX 200 is poised to open almost 1% lower today
Wall Street was mixed as a late surge in tech stocks lifts the Nasdaq
Oil prices crumble by 10% overnight

The ASX is headed for a loss today, with the benchmark ASX 200 July futures pointing down by 0.90% at 8am AEST.

Overnight, Wall Street had a mixed session after coming back from the long weekend break.

The S&P 500 was up 0.16%, the Dow Jones was down 0.42%, while tech heavy Nasdaq surged by 1.75%.

US traders are keeping watch on a flood of economic data to be released this week, including the FOMC minutes later tonight, GDP data on Thursday, and unemployment rate on Friday (all US time).

The biggest moving market overnight was oil, which plunged by 10% with the benchmark Brent crude now heading back towards at US$100 at US$104 a barrel.

It comes as the likelihood of a recession begins to curtail demand for oil. Citibank predicts that Brent could fall to $65 by the end of this year if the US falls into a recession.

Some are more optimistic.

“Recession fears are killing the crude demand outlook, but with prices roughly 17% lower from the March high, oil shouldn’t go much lower,” says Oanda’s market analyst, Edward Moya.

Citi says oil will collapse to $65 per barrel.
JPM says oil could go up to $380 per barrel.

I think that's everything you need to know about market forecasting.

— Ari Ozick (@ariozick) July 5, 2022

In other markets, iron ore price rose 4% to US$114.30 a tonne, while Bitcoin is back above US$20k at US$20,280.

Bloomberg reported that top crypto miner, Core Scientific, sold the bulk of its Bitcoin holdings in June. The miner sold 7202 mined coins for $US167 million.

5 ASX small caps to watch today

Synlait Milk (ASX:SM1)
Synlait has increased its forecast base milk price forecast for the 2022/2023 season to $9.50/kgMS from $9.00/kgMS. There is no change to the forecast base milk price for the 2021/2022 season, which remains at $9.30/kgMS.

Raiden Resources (ASX:RDN)
Maiden diamond drilling program on the Vuzel gold project in southeastern Bulgaria uncovered near-surface gold mineralisation. Results include 17m @ 1.13g/t Au from 1m, and 10m @ 1.18g/t Au from 7.7m.

Evolution Energy Minerals (ASX:EV1)
EV1 says extremely low level of impurities in Chilalo graphite has opened the door to advanced battery and nuclear applications. Evolution is currently undertaking a commercial verification program to evaluate the amenability of Chilalo graphite fines to producing coated battery anode materials using thermal purification and proprietary coating technologies.

Jindalee Resources (ASX:JRL)
Jindalee has updated its Mineral Resource Estimate (MRE) at the company’s 100% owned McDermitt Lithium Project in the US. The combined Indicated and Inferred Mineral Resource now stands at 1.82 billion tonnes at 1,370ppm Li, for a total of 13.3 million tonnes Lithium Carbonate Equivalent (LCE) at 1,000 ppm cut-off grade.

Southern Cross Gold (ASX:SXG)
SXG announced further high-grade gold results from three drill holes. Results include 42.4 m @ 1.0g/t AuEq from 87.8m, and 0.2m @ 30.9g/t AuEq.

At Stockhead we tell it like it is. While Evolution Energy Minerals is a Stockhead advertiser, it did not sponsor this article.