• The ASX is poised to open higher on Tuesday
  • US energy and bank stocks led Wall Street overnight
  • Binance and CEO CZ were sued by the CFTC

 

The ASX is set to rise at the open on Tuesday. At 7.30am AEDT, the ASX 200 April futures contract was pointing up by 0.40%.

Overnight, the S&P 500 index closed higher by 0.16%, while tech-heavy Nasdaq was down 0.47%.

A 5% rebound in crude oil prices sent US energy shares higher following a volatile few weeks for crude caught up in the banking storm.

“With sentiment slowly improving and yields inching cautiously higher, so too are oil prices,” said Oanda senior analyst, Craig Erlam.

US bank stocks were also bolstered after a large portion of failed bank SVB was sold to First Citizens Bank, with the FDIC retaining the remaining securities and other assets.

Now read: US banks rise, but so do fears for mortgage-backed securities… Again!

Disney share price was up almost 2% after the company began laying off 7,000 workers on Monday.

Cruise operator Carnival fell 5% after reporting a smaller-than-expected quarterly loss.

 

Binance and CZ sued

Coinbase fell 8% along with other crypto-related stocks after the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) sued Binance and its CEO Changpeng Zhao, alleging that they routinely broke American derivatives rules.

“Binance should have registered with the agency years ago, and continues to violate the CFTC’s rules,” according to the regulator.

The complaint says that despite not registering, Binance has offered and executed commodity derivatives transactions for US persons from July 2019 through the present.

“As alleged, Binance’s compliance program has been ineffective and, at Zhao’s direction, Binance has instructed its employees and customers to circumvent compliance controls in order to maximise corporate profits.”

The price of Bitcoin was down 3% to $27,030 in the last 24 hours.

 

Gold lower as turmoil eases

The yield on 10-year US Treasuries advanced 16bp to 3.54%.

Gold price is slipping amid higher yields and an improvement in risk appetite, falling more than 2% to US$1,930 an ounce.

“If turbulence in the banks subsides, we could see gold give back some of its recent gains,” said Erlam.

Iron ore climbed +0.5% to $US118.85 a tonne.

Ahead, expect to see Aussie retail sales data for Ferbruary, along with RBA speak by vice-governor Connolly.

 

5 ASX small caps to watch today

Noxopharm (ASX:NOX)
Noxopharm announced the development of a new proprietary product candidate based on mRNA technology as part of its Sofra preclinical platform. A lead candidate has now been selected for further development. Under the ongoing collaboration with the Hudson Institute of Medical Research, the team has synthesised a novel ‘vaccine enhancer’ called SOF-VAC.

Centrex (ASX:CXM)
Centrex has signed a binding offtake agreement with Ballance Agri-Nutrients for the purchase of phosphate from the Ardmore Phosphate Project. The deal is for a term of 2.75 years with Ballance committed to purchase approximately 30,000 tonnes of phosphate in the first year, with the second and third year allocations to be mutually agreed. Centrex has allocated up to 20% of production at Ardmore towards the Ballance offtake agreement.

Amani Gold (ASX:ANL)
Amani announced a new resource upgrade, which includes a maiden measured resource of 32.9Mt @ 1.08g/t Au for 1.1Moz. Total resource has increased by 7% Au oz from the previous 2020 Mineral Resource Estimate. 26% of the deposit now sits in the measured category, 35% indicated and 39% inferred.

Peako (ASX:PKO)
Peako has received Nickel Sulphide (NiS) fire assay results from a selection of 2022 drilling intervals at the Eastman PGE Project. Both rhodium and iridium make up less than 4% of the total PGM grade, but they constitute 17% of the indicative ‘basket price’. Mineralogical studies are ongoing in collaboration with the Australian National University (ANU) in order to understand the PGE distribution and metal association of the various PGEs.

SRG Global (ASX:SRG)
An infrastructure contract with Fortescue has been secured, valued at ~$55m. Scope of works include the construction of a 21km haul road for autonomous truck fleet. The contract commences this month with a duration of nine months. SRG has over $1 billion of new contract wins announced since the start of FY23.

Read MoreSmall Caps

Featured Companies

You might be interested in