ASX Small Caps Lunch Wrap: Who else is absolutely busting for some good news today?

Aussie markets are off to a cracker of a start this week, with the ASX 200 up 2.2% at open and still up 1.75% at lunch. Niiiice.

But while you’re all smiling and patting each other on the back for putting your money into the Materials sector late last week when it was deep in the doo-doo, spare a thought for the people of Noe Valley in San Francisco, where a promised (and, apparently, desperately needed) installation of a public pissoire (it’s French for ‘S–tter’) has been stalled.

The reason: The toilet – a single public toilet – is set to cost as much as $1.7 million to build and won’t even be completed until 2025.

The eye-watering cost is yet to be fully explained by the local government, but is being blamed on construction companies charging 20-30% more to build things in recent times, which they in turn are blaming on having to pay their workers enough money to be able to live on.

That, and the usual Public Works mantra of needing to meet “the cost of planning, drawing, permits, reviews, public outreach and construction management” – because drawing toilets is hard, man.

Meanwhile, none of this back’n’forth about the cost of the streetside bog is fixing the actual the problem in Noe Valley.

Because of the massive homelessness problem in the area, the streets of Noe Valley are reportedly awash with human waste, which is costing the local government huge sums of money to try to clean.

But that in itself is something of a Sisyphitic task, as the cleaning crew work their high-pressure hoses to the bone in an attempt to roll an enormous boulder of bog off the streets each day, only to have it replaced again by morning.

So, the Mega Millions Potty remains on hold for the Noe Valley, and the thousands of homeless folks in the area have been asked to cross their legs firmly and think happy thoughts for a few more years.

On a completely unrelated note, if anyone knows of a company in San Francisco’s Noe Valley that sells gumboots, fishing waders and nose plugs – and is looking for an investor – shoot me a quick email, please and thank you.

TO MARKETS

Australian markets have opened up with a bang this morning, with the ASX 200 firing off a 2.2% leap for the stars, which has eased just a tad to have the market trundling to the lunch break around 1.94% in the black.

After a few days slacking off last week, the Materials sector has extracted the proverbial digit from its bum, cranking out a +3.51% charge over the course of the past few hours, with InfoTech (+1.74%), Real Estate (+2.03%), Energy (+1.72%) and Consumer Discretionary (+1.91%) all getting in on the fun as well.

Leading the Large Cappers (not Warwick… the business ones) is Novonix (ASX:NVX), still riding high – up 14.5% this morning – on the news that Uncle Sam is about to tip buckets of money into the company coffers through a US$150 million development grant.

But… there is a leeeetle bit of a cloud over NVX, with the ASX on the blower asking about when it knew what and who else might have known about the grant. We’ll be diving into that later today in Closing Bell, so tune in for all the juicy gossip later today.

Meanwhile, child surveillance tech mob Life360 (ASX:360) is up 13.4% on news that the company has decided to charge parents even more money to keep their young ’uns safe from van-driving men who… let’s just say their favourite band might be called ‘Monstrous Nonce and the Touchy Uncles’.

Also doing well in the nosebleed seats are Evolution Mining (ASX:EVN) up 8.5%, Stanmore (ASX:SMR) up 6.8% and Syrah Resources (ASX:SYR) up 6.82%.

Let’s take a look overseas and see what’s what.

NOT THE ASX

A bit to unpack here, so I’ll leave the heavy lifting to Early Mornin’ Eddy – but the short version is that Wall Street has rallied on news that the next interest rate lift by the US Fed will most likely be another 75bps – but smaller jumps are on the cards after that.

On Friday, the S&P 500 rose by 2.37% on the news, while the Dow was up 2.47% and tech heavy Nasdaq by 2.31%. Good stuff, that.

In Asia this morning, Japan’s having a nice morning with the Nikkei up 1.37% on news that SuperMegaHappy NoodleFunTime Nuclear Fuel Corp has decided to split off its Anime and Hentai divisions into standalone companies.

In China, investors have reacted to Xi Jinping’s elevation to Emperor Forever and Ever For Real and No Backsies with a 0.72% fall.

But in Hong Kong, things are grim. Very Grim. Investors have reacted to Xi Jinping having former leader Hu Jingtao very publicly escorted from the building at his coronation with a horrifying 4.0% slide at open, which could upset local markets this afternoon.

In commodities, things are a bit all over the place again, with oil up 0.63% and gas retreating by 0.95%.

In the Shiny Things department, gold is up 0.19%, silver is leading the pack with a 0.83% rise and copper’s on the nose today, down 0.19%.

In CryptoLand, where the rides are imaginary but you still have to queue for three hours to get on them, Doge is up 250% this week and even so, I will never understand why it’s even a thing. Except it’s DogeCHAIN, not Dogecoin. Haha. Had you going there.

BTC is up 1.5% for the past 24 hours, ETC is up 3.76% over the same period.

As always, Rob “ANSWER ME!” Badman has all the info you need over at Mooners & Shakers. Go there and read it. It’s jolly, jolly good.

ASX SMALL CAP WINNERS

Here are the best performing ASX small cap stocks for October 24 [intraday]:

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

With the Materials sector on an all-out assault on the summit of Mount Moneymoney, there are a lot of Small Cap diggers doing very nicely indeed this morning – so here’s a handy list of the ones reporting a 20% gain or more:

• Native Mineral Resources (ASX:NMR) +32.5%
• Castillo Copper (ASX:CCZ) +23.5%
• St George Mining (ASX:SGQ) +21.4%
• Tigers Realm Coal (ASX:TIG) +21.4%
• Sunshine Gold (ASX:SHN) +20.0%

Meanwhile, it looks like Toys’R’Us (ASX:TOY) has managed to pick the poop out of its Play-Doh, up 19.5% after inking an exclusive sub-licence agreement with WH Smith High Street to trial nine Toys’R’Us store-in-store implants in the United Kingdom – a massive swing back from its 25.8% sell down on Friday.

With modern implant technology working some absolute miracles these days, TOY is no doubt looking forward to exposing a beautiful new set of Increased Sales and Higher Earnings twins, on Page 3 of a trashy British tabloid very soon.

ASX SMALL CAP LOSERS

Here are the most-worst performing ASX small cap stocks for October 24 [intraday]:

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