Why, Barney... whyyyyy? Pic via Getty Images
ASX Small Caps Lunch Wrap: Righto… who wants their childhood completely ruined today?
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Aussie markets have opened higher this morning, despite a tediously poor showing from Wall Street overnight, with one little Aussie gold miner popping a 100%+ gain – something that seems to be happening with a lot more regularity these days.
But before we get into that, if you’ll allow me a few minutes of your time, I’d like to take this opportunity to permanently ruin your childhood.
If you’re of a particular vintage and – like most kids in the ’90s and ’00s – spent your formative years glued to the television while it blasted your budding eyeballs with colour and movement, then you’ll know who Barney the Purple Dinosaur is.
For those that don’t, Barney is an anthropomorphised cuddly Tyrannosaurus Rex, who liked to sing and dance and solve problems and trigger phobias and aggressively psychologically damage an entire generation of kids:
It had long been rumoured in the darker corners of the internet that Ol’ Barney there harboured a deep and gruesome sexual secret – the memes about his ‘special love’ for children were everywhere, basically setting in stone a visceral fear that something ain’t quite right with our fat purple friend.
Well… it turns out that Barney did have a secret lurking inside him. The fella who dressed up in the costume – let’s call him David Joyner, because that’s his name – had more to give the wider community than his kid-friendly capering on TV.
After retiring from putting on the 30kg costume to entertain kids, Joyner has since followed his true calling: operating a Tantric Sex Therapy studio in … you guessed it … his gross basement.
No, no… we jest. The studio is in California, where he has a list of some 30 (female only) clients who pay him an eye-watering $350 a pop to “release energy and balance their chakras”.
This is achieved by letting Mr B Dinosaur give those clients a bath, then some chakra balancing, a massage, before finishing with a wall-shaking, neighbour-annoying orgasm.
Nice work if you can get it.
Most people would associate the whole “Tantric Sex” thing with semi-popular musician Sting, whose tales of seven-hour Tantric lovemaking sessions are eclipsed only in how tedious they are, by the 70-minute masturbatory sessions he likes to call “albums”.
But it turns out that Barney’s guts (aka, Mr Joyner) had been into the whole Tantric Sex thing the whole time.
The internet was right! Barney was a weird sex enthusiast. Mind = blown.
“A lot of the elements of Barney were a lot of the things I was training within tantra,” he said. “I always said it was never an accident, and that I was meant to do this character. The energy I brought up [while] in the costume is based on the foundation of tantra, which is love. Everything stems, grows, and evolves from love.”
As they say in the classics: “Ew, David!”
We can all only hope that the Barney suit stays well and truly in a box under the bed while all this is going on.
And now that I suspect we’ve managed to permanently scar quite a lot of you for life, let’s take a look at the markets to cheer everyone up a bit.
TO MARKETS
The ASX opened higher this morning, stabbing its flabby fingers into the rump of a 0.4% gain as the doors were flung open, and managing to hover around +0.4-0.5% for the rest of the morning, despite a fall on Wall Street overnight.
It’s a rare sight these days, but looking out over the market sectors and it’s green, green and more green (with the exception of Industrials, which is being anything but industrious and refusing to come out of its trailer at 0.00%).
Winning, though, are Energy (+1.95%), Materials (+0.86%) and Telcos (+0.47%) – and the rest of them are doing okay, I suppose.
Up the top end of town, it’s two major Energy players leading the charge, with Whitehaven (ASX:WHC) and New Hope (ASX:NHC) up 7.8% and 6.0% respectively, most likely because of coal price movements or a shortage somewhere or China’s run out of brand new buildings to demolish so they’ve started burning coal again for fun.
Sayona’s (ASX:SYA) back in the news again, this time with a 4.8% hike, but I’m full of the flu so the usual “Everyone Do the Sayona Dance” vibe is a bit muted today… but don’t let me stop you if you really want to have a little boogie at your desk.
Also winning this morning is Virgin Money UK (ASX:VUK), up 12.6% after the market realised there’s value in probably the only thing Virgin supremo Richard Branson hasn’t tried to VUK in the past 50 years. (I know you won’t let this one in, chief… I wrote it just for you).
Let’s take a look at what’s happened overseas so far today.
NOT THE ASX
As mentioned, Wall Street basically bummed everyone out last night because – get this – someone from the Fed opened their cakehole and said some stuff.
Which, of course, begs the question: When will these people learn???
San Francisco Fed president Mary Daly said she expected the central bank to hike rates more until the Fed funds rate reaches 5%.
Investors said “Oh. Erm… yeah, we’re out” and the S&P 500 dropped by 0.37%, the Dow by 0.12% and Nasdaq by 1%.
Of note: Tesla fell more than 6.0%, which probably has nothing to do with its CEO spending all his time playing I’m The King of the Castle over at his new $44 billion toy.
For more in depth on what’s happened in the US, Earlybird Eddy Sunarto has all the juicy goss for you in his Market Highlights wrap.
In Asia, Japan’s Nikkei has climbed 0.74% on news that The Rock is set to star in a new series of Japanese action films. The series will be entirely set in Japanese bathhouses, with The Rock set to play titular character Onsen Johnson.
Tagline: He’s Here to Clean Up Your Town. #WagyuBeef.
In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng is down 0.17% in very early trade, and Shanghai’s not that far behind it, down 0.11% as things are just getting started over there.
In crypto, things are… look, they’re not good. This whole FTX thing has really given the market a massive case of testicular torsion, and Coinbase in particular is copping a kicking at the moment.
It is, frankly, a massive mess – but luckily, Rob “BTFD” Badman knows what’s happening, and has all the news over at Mooners & Shakers today.
ASX SMALL CAP WINNERS
Here are the best performing ASX small cap stocks for November 22 [intraday]:
Swipe or scroll to reveal full table. Click headings to sort:
Code Company Price % Volume Market Cap BEZ Besra Gold 0.077 93% 30,308,152 $10,084,549 CPH Creso Pharma Ltd 0.032 60% 46,495,383 $36,719,143 TKL Traka Resources 0.008 60% 3,677,670 $3,443,873 NYM Narryer Metals 0.245 58% 9,601,203 $4,725,563 PRM Prominence Energy 0.0015 50% 150,000 $2,424,609 SXG Southern Cross Gold 0.74 25% 1,426,624 $36,735,023 ADR Adherium Ltd 0.005 25% 220,000 $19,100,782 MTH Mithril Resources 0.005 25% 173,901 $11,760,932 RMX Red Mount Min Ltd 0.005 25% 1,036,617 $6,569,455 OZM Ozaurum Resources 0.08 21% 1,209,294 $4,601,256 HXL Hexima 0.018 20% 30,000 $2,396,081 L1M Lightning Minerals 0.24 20% 3,328,374 $7,454,250 ICN Icon Energy Limited 0.006 20% 2,412,117 $3,840,068 AFL Af Legal Group Ltd 0.14 17% 102,552 $9,184,370 FIJ Fiji Kava Limited 0.021 17% 6,647,850 $5,011,925 OAU Ora Gold Limited 0.007 17% 75,000 $5,905,388 XTC Xantippe Res Ltd 0.007 17% 699,885 $48,871,379 AXE Archer Materials 0.75 15% 769,890 $161,828,685 CAD Caeneus Minerals 0.004 14% 51,250 $18,709,618 PLY Playside Studios 0.68 14% 1,034,424 $86,383,079 PUR Pursuit Minerals 0.0125 14% 871,201 $10,979,971 RDG Res Dev Group Ltd 0.059 13% 127,878 $150,026,046 LSA Lachlan Star Ltd 0.017 13% 2,595,251 $19,785,191 VUK Virgin Money Uk PLC 2.865 13% 3,083,282 $1,952,359,857
In Small Caps, and this morning’s clear winner is Besra Gold (ASX:BEZ) after hitting exceptional high and bonanza grade gold intercepts at Bekajang, within the Bau Limestone, in Indonesia, and popping a +115% gain which has since settled around +97.5% for the morning.
The intercepts are thick and juicy, like a 5kg tomahawk steak, with one hole producing 47m of mineralisation.
Mmmm… Girthy.
Also hitting a high note (sorry, not sorry) this morning is Creso Pharma (ASX:CPH), which has investors extremely excited because it is no longer being investigated by ASIC.
It’s no doubt felt like a very long 12 months for Creso’s Boaz Wachtel, Dr James Ellingford and Chris Grundy, but a year to the day that they were informed that they were being investigated, ASIC has written to tell them that they are no longer persons of interest in the investigation.
Investors have joined in the celebration, and Creso’s up a nice, fat 60.0% for the day so far.
And also bathing in the gravy train this morning is Narryer Metals (ASX:NYM), up a Never You Mind 58.0% on news that its Ivar Prospect at the Rocky Gully project continues to show strong mineralisation in both Total REE and “high value” Magnet REE.
Assays from pulp samples have returned solid results for TREO and scandium.
And finally, Southern Cross Gold (ASX:SXG) has bumped out a 25% gain on news that it has received firm commitments under a placement to raise $16 million (before costs) at $0.58 per share.
The placement followed its announcement of a wide intersection of gold-antimony mineralisation grading 305.8m @ 2.4g/t AuEq (1.6g/t Au, 0.5% Sb) from 319.2m at its 100%-owned Sunday Creek Gold-Antimony Project in Victoria – which explains why it was so popular.
ASX SMALL CAP LOSERS
Here are the most-worst performing ASX small cap stocks for November 22 [intraday]:
Swipe or scroll to reveal full table. Click headings to sort:
Code Company Price % Volume Market Cap CCE Carnegie Cln Energy 0.0015 -25% 1,240,074 $31,285,147 SIH Sihayo Gold Limited 0.002 -20% 740,000 $15,255,320 LAW Lawfinance Ltd 0.11 -19% 118,947 $8,622,134 INV Investsmart Group 0.25 -17% 3,000 $41,879,760 AUK Aumake Limited 0.005 -17% 11,377 $4,628,682 TD1 Tali Digital Limited 0.0025 -17% 2,600,001 $3,697,892 SW1 Swift Networks Group 0.016 -16% 93,123 $11,263,137 TTI Traffic Technologies 0.017 -15% 29,470 $14,443,404 STN Saturn Metals 0.2 -15% 255,438 $30,526,307 FEG Far East Gold 0.5 -14% 135,748 $70,781,582 RCR Rincon 0.125 -14% 138,261 $8,305,389 BTR Brightstar Resources 0.019 -14% 246,197 $15,850,947 TGH Terragen 0.095 -14% 8,327 $21,342,116 RFA Rare Foods Australia 0.078 -13% 104,200 $18,066,850 HPC Hydration Pharmaceuticals 0.13 -13% 75,618 $21,578,379 NWM Norwest Minerals 0.053 -13% 2,079,988 $13,548,551 FIN FIN Resources Ltd 0.02 -13% 529,360 $12,868,036 GNM Great Northern 0.0035 -13% 88,405 $6,836,204 NGS NGS Ltd 0.063 -13% 86,000 $10,648,137 UCM Uscom Limited 0.051 -12% 30,000 $11,520,881 ROC Rocketboots 0.093 -11% 805 $3,333,750 RRR Revolver Resources 0.235 -11% 305,718 $26,172,181 TYX Tyranna Res Ltd 0.0275 -11% 8,332,267 $74,568,185 CBE Cobre 0.2 -11% 781,907 $45,834,623 IPB IPB Petroleum Ltd 0.008 -11% 155,000 $4,107,329
