Aussie markets have benefitted from a lukewarm but still positive showing on Wall Street last night, climbing as high as +0.5% this morning before easing into the lunch break around +0.2%.

The US is on tenterhooks ahead of its midterm elections – a make-or-break test for both sides of the political aisle with instability the only sure predictable winner on the day.

We’ll get to that in a minute, but first, to our story today on the perils of letting the public decide just about anything, after the Scottish city of Perth held an open poll to determine the name of its new museum.

People Our Age will remember when the entire world lost its mind when some wag in the UK suggested the name Boaty McBoatface be the one carefully stencilled on the back of a brand new British polar research ship.

Oh, how we laughed – because it was funny as hell. 2016 was a far, far more innocent time.

But then, as it always does, word spread and the human race took what should have been a spectacular one-off and hammered it into the ground like they were trying to drive that joke through the heart of a member of the blood-sucking undead.

It culminated when NSW state Transport Minister Andrew Constance made a “captain’s pick”, after the state government decided that it, too, would have an open call for the public to name a new fleet of ferries for Sydney.

Constance hand-picked – wait for it – the highly original and clearly divinely-inspired “Ferry McFerryface”, no doubt hand-writing it at the top of the list of names before sitting back in his office chair, smiling warmly at what a fantastic job he was doing and how funny everyone would think he is.

The reaction from the public arrived with the shock and force of a Sydney Light Rail accident.

Constance was all but put in the pillories in the centre of Old Sydney Town for the public to throw rotting vegetables at, as is tradition, for (allegedly) 100% fabricating the results so that he could look kewl.

And so, it seemed, the lesson had been learned about asking the public to name things… which brings us to the city of Perth, in Scotland, and its quest to name its new museum.

The BBC reports that the vote’s been held, the polls are closed and the results are in. The people of Perth have spoken.

The venue they were tasked with naming shall forever be known as “The Perth Museum”.

Maybe that’s because the people of Perth aren’t morons, OldHag McHatchetFace had already been reserved for a plaque on the door of Margaret Thatcher’s lead-lined tomb and Gropey McSporranFondler was too low-brow even for me to write.

So let us all bask briefly in some rare moment of hope that, as the population of the United States gears up to vote in what are arguably the most crucial midterm elections for both sides of politics, they can take a leaf from the citizens of Perth and resist the urge to vote Shooty McBurgerFace or (God forbid) Mayor McCheese into office, dooming us all to a global economic meltdown.

Now… don’t quote me on this, but I am pretty sure the Australian markets opened this morning, so let’s take a look and see how they’re doing.

 

TO MARKETS

Australian markets opened with a nudge and a wink this morning, with a salacious 0.2% hike of the skirts – and it’s not even lunchtime! Filthy, filthy beast.

Across the sectors, it’s Financials (+1.02%), Health Care (+0.91%), and The Consumer Twins, Staples (+0.73%) and Discretionary (+0.69%) putting in a workmanlike performance as the market engine room this morning.

Meanwhile Materials (-0.59%), Telcos (-0.39%) and Industrials (-0.34%) all seem to be doing their darndest to ‘take the tradesman’s entrance’ and bugger us all.

There is a lone, solitary mega-moolah massive cap on the winner’s list this morning, and – you couldn’t make this up if you tried – it’s The Lottery Corporation (ASX:TLC), because some people like to gamble in their pyjamas, while others (he says, peering around carefully) like to do their carefully-considered wagering wearing suits.

The reason for TLC’s 5.2% uptick this morning was the release of a trading update for the company’s AGM, where it was reported that Group Revenue in FY22 increased 9% to just over $3.5 billion across the lotteries and Keno business.

The company says that in that same period, “more than 300 Australians became millionaires through our games”, which means 25,890,373 Australians didn’t. Cracking stuff.

And speaking of losing vast sums of money, James Hardie (ASX:JHX) walked off a 13.9% cliff this morning, after it reported reasonable growth for the year but slashed its net income guidance for the financial year from between $US730m and $US780m to between $US650m and $US710m.

 

NOT THE ASX

Overnight, Wall Street put in a modestly positive performance, ahead of the all-important midterm elections that could potentially scuttle the Biden administration’s legislative agenda for the next two years, as Democrats scramble to maintain their razor-thin majority in the US Senate.

As elections go, this one is genuinely too close to call – but whatever the outcome, probably the safest bet of all is that the result will spark fireworks the likes of which could potentially unbalance an already unstable US economy.

But even with all that looming on the horizon, Wall Street’s major indices did okay. The Nasdaq added 0.85%, the S&P climbed 0.96% and the Dow lifted a creditable 1.31%.

Not bad at all for a democracy on the brink – but if you’ve ever wanted to see what an entire bourse looks like when it’s holding its breath, this is as good a chance as any, as stock futures flatlined ahead of the vote.

Futures strapped to the Dow Jones Industrial average were down 18 points or 0.05%, while  S&P and Nasdaq futures fell 0.05% and 0.01%, respectively.

In Asia this morning, Japanese markets have opened 1.26% higher after research revealed that original Iron Chef Chairman Takeshi Kaga has consumed enough completely gross, slimy eel flesh to bolster the national economy and make it all-but recession proof for 99 years.

In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng is trading 0.15% lower early in the session, while in Shanghai the market has fallen even further, down 0.5% as we prep for lunch.

In commodities, it’s a real mixed bag, as gas prices eased considerably after the massive squirt from yesterday. Oil is up 0.2% while gas fell back 3.56% overnight and metals dipped slightly across the board, with gold (-0.15%), silver (-0.23%) and copper (-0.08%) edging into the red this morning.

In Crrrrrepto (I’m trying out a new Scottish accent – let me know what you think in the comments, and don’t forget to like and subscribe), US midterms, CPI data and the FTX war of words with Binance have thrown an enormous damp rug over just about everything.

As usual, Rob “Gaun, ya wee bawbag” Badman has the deets on the beat, over at Mooners and Shakers, so go read it or you’ll never catch up.

 

ASX SMALL CAP WINNERS

Here are the best performing ASX small cap stocks for November 8 [intraday]:

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Topping the winners list in the land of Small Caps is data analytics services firm Skyfii (ASX:SKF), which climbed an artery-stiffening 68.6% this morning on news that it had signed an agreement for the deployment of Skyfii’s restaurant operations with McDonald’s in the US.

The three-year deal will see Skyfii’s tech rolled out in eight of the 13,342 McDonald’s restaurants Stateside, snagging $2 million for SKF as it delivers “an industry first real-time whole of restaurant monitoring and analysis solution focused on improving restaurant operations, service efficiency, food freshness and customer satisfaction”.

Meanwhile, Trek Metals (ASX:TKM) has shown that yesterday’s gains were no mere fluke, adding a further 30.7% so far today while investors digest the company’s 3.07% Li2O assays from its Tambourah lithium project.

And Sarytogan Graphite (ASX:SGA) has dropped news of more high-grade drilling results from the Sarytogan Graphite Deposit in glorious Central Kazakhstan, with a lengthy list of numbers that look like this:

  • 22.9m @ 30.1% TGC from 16.2m incl. 5.1m @ 35.5% in ST-73
  • 25.1m @ 34.0% TGC from 17.9m incl. 17.9m @ 37.1% in ST-74
  • 69.6m @ 25.5% TGC from 20.2m incl. 4.7m @ 37.7% in ST-77
  • 15.9m @ 32.1% TGC from surface incl. 10.0m @ 38.1% in ST-78
  • 25.4m @ 33.2% TGC from surface incl. 5.0m @ 36.6%
    • incl. 16.3m @ 36.4%
  • 26.4m @ 34.2% TGC from surface incl. 12.4m @ 37.8%
    • incl. 11.4m @ 35.3% in ST-82A
  • 20.1m @ 33.4% TGC from surface incl. 8.4m @ 36.4%
    • incl. 9.2m @ 36.5% in ST-82
  • 74.1m @ 29.1% TGC from surface incl. 13.6m @ 36.3% ST-83

The results come from a previously sparsely drilled area of the 209Mt @ 28.5% TGC Inferred Mineral Resource, and are solid enough numbers to have SGA up by 21.7% so far today.

 

ASX SMALL CAP LOSERS

Here are the most-worst performing ASX small cap stocks for November 8 [intraday]:

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