Australian markets have opened higher this morning, tracking gains on Wall Street but tempered by weakness in Materials and Energy.

We’d ask them for an apology, but there’s a bigger ‘sorry’ on the table we’d like to talk about briefly – and that is yet another mea culpa from the Biggest Ego in Rock, Bono.

He’s that insufferable Irish chappy who likes to turn and do… stuff… like raise awareness for things, sing songs in Ukrainian bunkers to Send a Message to Putin, and not pay his income taxes by being a “tax rogue”. Smug bastard.

But the worst crime Bono ever committed was having his band U2’s 2014 album “Songs Of Innocence” forcibly injected onto every iPod and iPhone in the world. The bastard.

And then had it set up so that it was impossible to remove said album from your iPod or iPhone without an advanced degree in computer science and about four hours of hard graft. The utter, utter bastard.

He has, however, issued an apology, deep inside a memoir that he’s written, because of course he has – and of course it’s a sorry that’s riddled with more caveats than a first year Law lecture.

But the gist of it is this (and I am paraphrasing, so bear with me):

Bono had an idea, to share his band’s music with the whole wide world, for free. Nada. Nix. Zip. BNPL. etc.

So he went to Tim Cook at Apple, and said: “I want to give the whole wide world my band’s music. For free. Nada. Nix. Zip. BNPL.”

Cook was, naturally, perplexed, asking the obvious question: “But… what will you eat if you don’t get paid for your art?”

To which Bono says, in a stroke of genius: “No no, Mr Tim. We will get paid. By you. And then you give our music away to everyone.”

Neatly proving that he is both an astute businessman, and a complete bastard.

If you still have a device that is haunted by “Songs of Innocence”, we have some bad news… you have to reach out to Apple directly to ask them to take it off for you. At this point, the album is basically audio ransomware.

You can remove it by asking politely, or by spending 25 Litas or more in a single transacation at the Aušra mall shopping centre that Bono bought in Lithuania through a Maltese company called Nude Assets so that he’d only have to pay 5% tax on any money he made. The utter, utter, utter, utter, utter, utter bastard.

(The single-use 76-digit code to remove the album is on the back of the receipt, in between the ads for Lubna’s Krazy Dry Klean Bargains and a hand-drawn picture of a turnip wearing a beanie).

Meanwhile, U2 are richer than God, thanks partially to the millions Apple paid the band for the pleasure of infuriating every customer they had. The bastards.

 

TO MARKETS

Aussie markets made a positive start to the day, with the benchmark showing a bit more skin, adding 0.7% the moment it had finished its porridge. That’s eased to around 0.44% as the oatmeal gives way to the gnawing hunger that only a pub schnitty could dull as lunchtime rolls round.

Across the sectors, it’s Materials (-0.76%) and Energy (-0.97%) holding things down today, despite some sterling efforts to boost the benchmark by Consumer Discretionary (+0.95%), Health Care (+1.44%), Real Estate (+1.76%) and Telcos (+1.27%).

At the Cigar and Armagnac Bar, there are a smattering of Big Players in the green today – and it’s at this point that I’d like to welcome back an old friend, Sayona Mining (ASX:SYA), the Large Cap that swings harder than the doors to an old-timey saloon.

SYA is back in the charts today, throwing out a market-leading 8.5% gain on the Absolutely Earth-Shattering (not really) news that Piedmont Lithium’s interest in the company has dipped a few points through a share dilution.

As is customary, everyone reading this is now honour-bound to stand up wherever you are, dance a few seconds of the “Sayona Swing” and pat yourself on the back for being part of something bigger than all of us.

Liontown (ASX:LTR) is also up, climbing 6.5% because it’s called an AGM (for real… that’s the only news). Same goes for Core Lithium (ASX:CXO), up 5.3% and holding an AGM soon.

(Just wanted to add in here that the real reason they’re all up is as part of a broader lift across most of the lithium players, and I’m not a complete idiot. I look forward to your angry emails, etc etc.)

Not enjoying Tuesday (and who can blame them… Tuesdays are rubbish) is Reliance Worldwide Corporation (ASX:RWC), down 13.3% after releasing a ponderous quarterly results report that was difficult to understand – but the thrust of it was that things at Reliance have been badly battered by forex fluctuations and they, too, are terribly, terribly sorry.

 

NOT THE ASX

Let’s take a look overseas, and it’s the rarest of rare days, with all the major indices that I can be bothered to look at all in the green. What a lovely thing to see.

In the US, the S&P finished up 1.19%, the Dow climbed 1.34% and the MetaiPhoneGoogle mob added 0.86%, despite MetaFaceThing continuing to tip countless billions into a fake online world that absolutely no one wants to use.

Early Morning Eddy points out that the US is doing well today as momentum builds on calls that the Fed will be tapping the tightening brakes after next week’s policy meeting, and ahead of mega-cap tech earnings.

The five biggest technology companies – Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon and Meta – are set to release their quarterly earnings results later this week, Eddy writes, because he’s very good at that sort of stuff.

“No one wants to aggressively buy big tech stocks until we hear this week’s big earnings from Apple, Alphabet, and Amazon,” said OANDA analyst Edward Moya, who is also good at stuff.

In Asia, things are looking pretty rosy today as well – despite the CCP’s goings on in China, which the extremely brave Christian Edwards has covered in breathtakingly brilliant style here, shortly before he was bundled into a van and never seen again.

Hong Kong gave back some of yesterday’s (clearly a protest) losses, up 0.77% and Shanghai is flatter than a Peking Duck pancake, up just 0.03% after spending all its money on a new van to abduct Mr Edwards, possibly.

In Japan, the Nikkei is up 0.77%. I had a really good idea for a joke in here, but the phone rang and I got stuck talking to my electricity provider and now I can’t remember it. But it was genuinely hilarious. Please believe me.

In Crapto [sic],  BTC is down, despite the new incoming British PM Rishi Sunak being quite famously “All about Bitcoin”. To prove that he’s definitely in touch with the common man, here’s a video of him not knowing how to use a contactless debit card to buy a can of fizzy drink.

 

 

Give that man the keys to the kingdom, stat!

You can get all the great gossip from Rob “I’ve been contactless for months” Badman, over at Mooners and Shakers.

 

ASX SMALL CAP WINNERS

Here are the best performing ASX small cap stocks for October 25 [intraday]:

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

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Taking the trophy this morning by a nose, head and a country bloody mile is C29 Metals (ASX:C29), which put out a release this morning that contained all the magic words: Argentina Lithium Triangle.

C29 has inked an option agreement to acquire 80% of two exploration licences, Pocitos 7 and Pocitos 9, located within Argentina’s Salta Province, part of the world renowned South American lithium triangle.

As a result, C29 was trading a bed-breaking 70% higher at lunch time, but has eased a little to 63.9% since. (2:40pm update – C29 is now up by 80%).

Meanwhile, Rubix Resources (ASX:RB6) has jumped 20% on no news, and St George (ASX:SGQ) is into its fifth happy day of solid gains, climbing another 17.6% this morning – disproving my theory about rubbish Tuesdays entirely, but we’re happy for them anyway.

 

ASX SMALL CAP LOSERS

Here are the most-worst performing ASX small cap stocks for October 25 [intraday]:

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

Wordpress Table Plugin

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