Market highlights and 5 ASX small caps to watch today

Overseas Markets Highlights

Wall Street was little changed on Friday – with Dow Jones up 0.003%, the S&P 500 down 0.19%, and the Nasdaq up 0.07%.

Oil prices ended the week 1.14% lower as Texas starts to gradually recover and oil wells opened back up.

Copper reaches a nine-year high of US$8,806.50/t on Friday’s LME trading, the highest level since 1 May 2012.

US and Aussie bond yields keep rising, signalling potential inflation.

Bitcoin above US$57,000, market value hits US$1 trillion

Bitcoin hit record highs again, topping US$57,000 and boosting its price gain this year to 97%. At this price, the crypto’s market cap has reached over US$1 trillion for the first time.

Elon Musk tweeted the rationale behind Tesla’s decision to buy Bitcoin – saying that “when fiat currency has negative real interest rate, only a fool wouldn’t look elsewhere”, and that Bitcoin is “simply a less dumb form of liquidity than cash.”

Closer to home

Media code
The latest on the media bargaining code: Google caved in and made deals with NewsCorp and Seven West Media, while Facebook seems to have had a change of mind over the weekend, and is also on the cusp of making deals with Australian media companies.

Earnings season on the ASX

This morning, BlueScope Steel (ASX:BSL) reported a jump of 78 per cent on first half net profits.

Bingo (ASX:BIN) profits slipped 58 per cent.

Lendlease (ASX: LLC) net profit slid 37.4 per cent to $196 million.

A slew of ASX tech companies will also be reporting their earnings this week.

Market darling Afterpay (ASX:APT) will be the highlight for the week. Afterpay’s first half revenue is expected to come in at $446 million.

Other stocks to report earnings this week, along with the consensus include:

Zip Co (ASX:Z1P) is expected to report a $9.7 million first-half EBITDA loss.

Kogan.com (ASX:KGN) – consensus EBITDA of $44.5 million.

Appen (ASX:APX) – full-year underlying EBITDA expected in the range of $106 million to $109 million.

Qantas (ASX:QAN) – expects a $1.09 billion loss before tax.

5 ASX small caps on watch today

Althea (ASX:AGH) – The cannabis play announced that its subsidiary has received its first purchase order from Canadian based WeedMD RX Inc for CAD $130,000.

Coda Minerals (ASX:COD) – The company said assay results confirm huge lateral extent of Emmie Bluff Copper–Cobalt mineralisation

Senex Energy (ASX:SXY) – For H1 FY21, sales revenue of $45 million, up 239%; with underlying EBITDA of $25 million, up $26 million;

Impedimed (ASX:IPD) – Reported record total revenue for H1 FY21 of $3.6 million, +26% the previous corresponding period (pcp).

Empired (ASX:EPD) – Reported NPAT of $7.7 million, up 284% for H1 Y21. 1.5 cents unfranked interim dividend payable 15 March 2021.

McGrath (ASX:MEA) – Half year underlying EBITDA increased by 317% to $6.63 million.