Aussie markets opened higher this morning, tracking an overnight rally on Wall Street that added some much-needed buoyancy to investor sentiment here at home.

The benchmark shot up 0.6% in early trade, and spent the morning on track to beat the +0.45% that the ASX 200 March futures contract was pointing at prior to the market opening today.

But for now, let’s all pause briefly to consider the ramifications of news out of Russia overnight, where it’s been revealed that All-American Action Movie Legend Steven Seagal has been awarded Moscow’s highest non-military honours for … *checks notes* … “humanitarian work”.

In an official state decree published on Monday, the Kremlin had awarded the 70-year-old star Russia’s Order of Friendship for his efforts as a special representative of Russia’s Foreign Ministry for humanitarian ties with the United States and Japan.

Seagal and Putin are quite famously big fans of each other – to the point that the former Hollywood superstar described Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea as “very reasonable”, despite it now being readily apparent it was just a practice run for Russia’s decision to invade Ukraine.

That’s some top-shelf humanitarian work there, chief. Outstanding stuff.

It might seem a little mean-spirited to be taking aim at a guy who (allegedly) was quite the kung-fu maestro back in the day, and who has every right to be a bit purse-lipped and bitter about being overlooked, for decades, by Hollywood at the Oscars.

But it’s no secret that Seagal has been making terrible movies for quite some time now – and they are getting observably worse the longer he tries to keep up the charade.

Case in point: 2022’s epically bad Contract to Kill, in which the actor plays a combination CIA/DEA agent teamed up with a “seductive” (not really) FBI agent to fight Middle Eastern terrorists in Istanbul who are trying to use Mexican smuggling routes to bring weapons of mass destruction into the United States.

The film’s tagline – ”They didn’t just cross the border. They crossed the line.” – tells you almost everything you need to know about how irredeemably sh-t this film is.

But what’s most remarkable about (spoiler alert) Seagal successfully murdering dozens of bad dudes is that whether he is on the phone or actively shooting at the enemy, he is literally sitting down for the entire movie.

Even more remarkable is the fact that it was one of six films Seagal was in that year alone – the vast majority of which were Direct to БетаМах Щидео Кассетте efforts that are now being used to pad streaming service libraries to create the illusion of value for consumers.

He’s clearly still in full possession of his amazing martial arts skills, though – as this 2017 footage of him putting in Maximum Effort demonstrates.

 

Or… doesn’t.

Now – just to be 100% clear – I am in no way suggesting that the surprisingly large number of really terrible films that Seagal has made (and no one has watched) over the past 10 years or so are in any way just a means for heavily-protected Russian oligarchs to leverage Seagal’s waning star power to gain access to some Hollywood Accounting-style magic to launder catastrophically massive sums of money stolen from the people of Russia during the forcible privatisation of formerly state-owned Soviet-era infrastructure, resources and assets.

… but wouldn’t it be funny if that was true?

Anyhoo – I look forward to your angry emails, and being murdered in my sleep by Seagal himself, once Moscow agrees to lend him one of those massive Antonov freight planes to haul his massive arse to my place and exact his terrible revenge.

 

TO MARKETS

Local markets lifted this morning, climbing +0.6% in the early hours of trading before easing to +0.5% as we sprinted into lunchtime in precisely the way Steven Seagal either won’t, or can’t, or both.

Enjoying the morning’s fresh air and sunshine are the Materials and Energy sectors, both of them up around +1.2% at midday, but starting to track lower as the day wears on.

Meanwhile, Utilities is sagging like the career of an ageing action movie star, down 1.05% with Consumer Discretionary on hand at -0.42% to keep it company.

At the pointy end of the plane, Large Cap miners De Grey (ASX:DEG) and Syrah (ASX:SYR) are both enjoying the fruits of the morning’s Materials sector bounce, up 5.0 and 5.4% respectively.

Losing a lot of ground this morning is Harvey Norman (ASX:HVN), dumping 12% after posting its third consecutive EBITDA fall to $694 million, and NPAT down to $365.9 million.

Harvey Norman’s very pretty consumer-friendly Half-Yearly report presentation did employ what looks suspiciously like a bit of “creative design work” to visually mitigate the decline in profits.

But eagle-eyed investor types all appear to have noticed that the retailer’s claim that its most recent NPAT is a 71.3% increase is true, when comparing it to the result from 2020.

 

NOT THE ASX

In the US overnight, no one from the US Fed said anything about interest rates, and markets there rose gently; the Dow added 0.22%, the S&P climbed 0.31% and the Nasdaq was up 0.63% by the end of the session.

US Mega Investor Warren Buffet has penned his annual letter to shareholders, in which he explained that a lot of his success boils down to luck, with a nod to the bulk of his wagers in the last 60 years being “no better than so-so”.

“The lesson for investors is the weeds wither away in significance as the flowers bloom,” he said. “Over time, it takes just a few winners to work wonders. And, yes, it helps to start early and live into your 90s as well.”

So, there you have it… The Buffett Method™ in a nutshell: Start investing really early, be super lucky and live far, far longer than everyone else.

We’ve got a bit of Buffett Madness here at Stockhead today as well – our very own Christian “Chedward” Edwards has his recap of The Greatest Love Story Ever Sold, the tale of when Buffet met Munger and changed the face of being disgustingly wealthy in America forever.

In Japan, the Nikkei is up 0.44%, bucking off community concerns over a shocking new online trend that has started gaining traction on social media.

According to Sydney’s Daily Telegraph newspaper, Japan is firmly in the grip of a wave of “Sushi Terrorism”, which ticks every box in the holy trinity of touchpoints for maximum outrage, involving a) young people, b) social media and c) food that the story’s target audience will undoubtedly believe falls squarely into the “foreign muck” category.

Apparently, the latest trend is youngsters filming themselves interfering with food at Sushi Train-style restaurants, licking the salmon nigiri and putting it back for someone else to eat, then posting the videos on the internet.

It’s obviously not ideal that gross people are doing gross things to gross food – but if you’re in any way concerned about eating stuff that potentially unethical randos have been molesting, then maybe eating at what amounts to a high-tech pig trough might not be the best option for lunch today.

In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng is up 0.55% in early trade, while in Shanghai the market has jumped 0.33%.

 

ASX SMALL CAP WINNERS

Here are the best performing ASX small cap stocks for February 28 [intraday]:

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Smashing it out of the Small Caps park this morning is Mt Monger Resources (ASX:MTM), posting a 33.3% gain on news that it’s  received firm commitments for a two-tranche placement of new shares at $0.10 a pop to raise up to $3.0 million before costs.

The funds will be will primarily be applied towards the company’s maiden diamond drill program at its recently acquired Pomme rare earth element (REE) and niobium (Nb) project, located in Québec, Canada – where all the cool kids are busy scratching about in the dirt before winter comes and turns everyone there into meat popsicles for a few months.

Also surging today is BikeExchange (ASX:BEX), up 33.3% with nearly double its four-week average volume after the Consumer Cyclical (ha!) company’s half-year results show that it has managed to take a 77% pcp revenue increase and deliver an 81% larger loss.

Still, for whatever reason, it’s a company that quite a few people have very publicly written off over the past 12 months – yet, here we are, and BEX is up 9.9% over the past five days.

And with some even more startling (in a good way, not a weird way) numbers have driven Rectifier Technologies (ASX:RFT) to a 19.5% gain this morning, after the company dropped an after-hours earnings report that shows a 194% revenue surge to around $19.3 million, which has in turn delivered a staggering 834% climb in profit.

 

ASX SMALL CAP LOSERS

Here are the most-worst performing ASX small cap stocks for February 28 [intraday]:

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