Most of the time, it’s really not hard to tell when, in the words of the great bard Shakespeare himself, “Thou hast well and truly screwed thine pooch” – because we live in a world where Social Media can, and often gleefully will, make it abundantly clear that you dun goofed.

Prime example is the cautionary tale of American Sportsball Superhuman, Davante Adams, who has made a couple of really bad decisions in recent times.

First of all, he abandoned the Green Bay Packers at the end of last season… an unforgivable sin that will never, ever be forgotten. Unless you don’t barrack for the Packers, in which case you probably don’t even care.

Far more recently, though, Adams found out that he’d made a catastrophic error of judgement when this Tweet went out to the world.

 

BREAKING: Davante Adams has been permanently banned from Worlds of Fun.

— Worlds of Fun (@worldsoffun) October 11, 2022


 

The kicker… Adams has never even set foot inside Worlds of Fun. Ever.

To be fair to the helplessly-inaccurately-named Worlds of Fun, Adams did do something even dumber than breaking the hearts of every single Packers fan in the world, when he unleashed this completely “no bueno” move on a cameraman, following a close loss to the Kansas City Chiefs on the weekend.

Awful, obviously – and Adams says he feels terrible, which should be considered as an obviously relative term considering Mr Cameraguy was hospitalised. And in the US particularly, that means Adams could end up on the wrong end of lawsuit, or even criminal charges.

If he does, however, it’s unlikely to be the most gruesome courtroom goof we see this year from the United States, because that title has already been clinched by the inexplicably popular Conspiracy Beetroot, Alex Jones.

Jones famously called a mass shooting in which 20 children were murdered at Sandy Hook a hoax. A couple of juries have since famously decided that Jones was telling enormous lies.

And now a jury has famously decided that Jones is on the hook for nearly US$1 billion dollars in compensation to the family of victims for spreading his horrific lies.

It couldn’t have happened to a nicer bloke.

 

TO MARKETS

The ASX has defied a late crumble by Wall Street overnight to go its own way for the second day in a row.

The benchmark’s anti-stall start technology appeared to kick in when the opening bell rang, but it has since added 0.5% as Financial sector shares took the reins, leading local markets by example with a rock-solid 1.84%.

Real Estate, however, has been a massive buzzkill, harshing everyone’s mellow to the tune of -1.24%, with Health Care driving an ambulance into the middle of the real estate pity party, only to be declared “totally bummed out” on arrival, shedding 0.80% before midday.

From a cruising altitude of 36,000 feet, though, it’s Qantas (ASX:QAN) leading the Big Biznez ladder – now trading 11.9% higher (or 40,284 feet) this morning after a solid Group Market Update revealing the airline is on track to land $1.2 billion in Underlying Profit Before Tax for 1H23.

It’s great news for all Australians, as it’s a solid platform to see some of the countless millions of dollars Qantas was given by the former government to stay afloat during the pan… sorry – I’ll have to stop there, because I’m laughing too hard at the prospect of that ever happening.

In its defence, Qantas has flagged that a staggeringly massive 0.03% of that money will flow to its workers in the form of increased wages and *checks notes*… “improvement to staff travel benefits”.

Neato.

Eddy’s got a far clearer round-up of what the Qantas announcement means here.

Elsewhere, Energy mob Infratil (ASX:IFT) gets a solid “A” for consistency, losing another 4.16% on top of yesterday’s losses, which sees it down 11.46% for the month.

Let’s take a quick look overseas, before Qantas has all of our passports cancelled, or Alan Joyce comes round to TP our houses.

 

NOT THE ASX

In the US, markets are now six days into a losing streak, with indices on Wall Street wandering about all confused and mumbly for most of the day, before fading somewhere between afternoon tea and a Golden Girls re-run.

The S&P dipped 0.33%, with the Dow and the Nasdaq neck and neck, inching 0.09% and 0.1% lower respectively.

Eddy “Always up early” Sunarto reports that things are not looking great economically in the US, with the minutes from the FOMC meeting in September revealing that Fed officials have been surprised at the pace of inflation and expect rates to remain high until prices come down.

“Participants judged that the Committee needed to move to, and then maintain, a more restrictive policy stance in order to meet the Committee’s legislative mandate to promote maximum employment and price stability,” an excerpt from the meeting summary stated.

All the hoo-haa about rates in the US is causing more than a little bit of angst for US investors, and – tellingly – the VIX index, which gauges market volatility and also called the “fear index”, has spiked by 15% in the last five days.

In the UK, the most polite thing we can say today is that it’s an absolute bunfight, after Bank of England (BoE) governor Andrew Bailey reversed course on his earlier decision to end the Bank’s emergency bond purchases by Friday.

The uncertainty triggered a selloff in British bonds last night, sending the 30-year gilt yield rising by 20bp – a seismic move for an asset that usually trades within a 1-2bp band.

In Asia, things are also looking pretty choppy, with the major indices down right across the board.

Hong Kong has dropped 0.42%, doing better than Shanghai (-0.50%) and worse than the Nikkei (-0.41%).

Things are looking a lot better over at the commodities desk, though, with the board showing everything green, for now.

Oil is up 0.14%, gas is only just higher, up 0.02% and gold (0.07%), silver (0.35%) and copper (0.09%) are all doing better this morning as well.

And in Crypto corner, where the naughty kids have to sit for an hour when they get busted dealing non-fungible lunacy to each other, BTC and ETH have edged up slightly in the face of some confusing market data out of the States.

As is the case every day, Rob “I’m a Black Belt in Funge Kwan Do” Badman has all the crypto details you could ask for over at Mooners & Shakers.

 

ASX SMALL CAP WINNERS

Here are the best performing ASX small cap stocks for October 13 [intraday]:

Swipe or scroll to reveal full table. Click headings to sort:

Wordpress Table Plugin
 

In Small Caps, Auris Minerals (ASX:AUR)  is up a baffling 29.4% on no news for nearly a month, so let’s just say it’s because an Uber driver in Melbourne heard something from a mate of his cousin’s, and told a few other people about it last night, and move on.

Also this morning, Taruga Minerals (ASX:TAR) has climbed a far more justifiable 27.6% on news about its clay-hosted REEs from surface at Morgans Creek, where drilling has turned up the following results.

  • MCRB005: 14m @ 1,016ppm TREO from 3m (33% MREO; 44% HREO; 55% CREO)
  • MCRB007: 16m @ 913ppm TREO from 2m (29% MREO; 51% HREO; 58% CREO), including 3m @ 2,092ppm TREO from 2m
  • MCRB018: 10m @ 780ppm TREO from 4m (27% MREO)
  • MCRB023: 7m @ 706ppm TREO from 4m (34% MREO)
  • MCRB024: 9m @ 1,093ppm TREO from 3m (25% MREO)
  • MCRB025: 9m @ 1053ppm TREO from 1m (38% MREO; 40% HREO; 60% CREO)
  • MCRB031: 5m @ 822ppm TREO from 9m (27% MREO)
  • MCRB033: 24m @ 886ppm TREO from surface (35% MREO; 42% HREO; 56% CREO) Including 5m @ 2,378ppm TREO from 2m, with 1m @ 6,068ppm TREO from 3m, and 3m @ 1,101ppm TREO from 17m

And Elmo Software (ASX:ELO) is up 24.4% (and also in a trading halt) this morning, with the company confirming that there are at least a couple of companies expressing interest in acquiring Elmo entirely.

It’s an explanation that sounds a lot more feasible than ours, which was that Elmo’s trading higher this morning on news that its engineers have finally managed to roll out a patch to stop its entire range of “Tickle Me” toys from whispering to children while they sleep, with the company saying that, following the update, the killings should finally come to an end.

 

ASX SMALL CAP LOSERS

Here are the most-worst performing ASX small cap stocks for October 13 [intraday]:

Swipe or scroll to reveal full table. Click headings to sort:

Wordpress Table Plugin
 

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