ASX Small Caps Lunch Wrap: Who else wants to blame the world’s ills on social media?

Australian markets have dipped this morning after Wall Street went proper mental after the Big Tech companies started bleeding everywhere. Gross, and bags not cleaning it up.

But we do have to wear some of the spatter pattern, because the ASX 200 has been gearing up for a slide since the milk hit the Weeties this morning, landing with a slug-like ‘glorp’ at -0.6% by lunch time.

Luckily, we’ve been able to heed the advice of former PM John Howard, so the result so far today has left us alert, not alarmed, and breathing deeply through a fog of profound disappointment.

There are, obviously, a lot of moving parts to this whole share markets and finance stuff, but for the sake of convenience and laziness, we’re pinning the droop on social media companies.

It’s their own fault for being such massive, slow-moving targets, really… they just make it so easy.

Take Meta, for example… because today, 28 October, is the one-year anniversary of the day that Mark Zuckerberg stood up and announced that he was going to change the core and fundamental nature of human existence.

His first move was to rename the company he possibly founded, from Facebook to Meta.

Yep. It’s been a year. Can you believe it? Where has the time gone?

Since Zuckerberg set out to rebuild the universe into his much-vaunted Metaverse, two things have happened:

1. The company has blown through US$15 billion in 12 months making something that everybody who’s tried it hates.
2. The company’s trading price has sagged like an octogenarian’s weird, wrinkly man-boobs, down a near-perfectly poetic 69.10% – losing 24% in the past 24 hours alone.

It’s a performance so poor that it’s hard to describe – but if you imagine this fight, but with only one person repeatedly punching themselves in the face, we’d be getting close.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=le69DBh7YwY

 

To be fair, it’s not just Meta that’s been hard at work soiling their 1000-thread count Egyptian cotton linen.

In the same timeframe, $SNAP has been taken from a $54 stock to below US$10, an ~82% lurch in the wrong direction as well.

For Meta investors, it’s a bet that is starting to look like they’ve accidentally included the coffee cart and a caravan selling kebabs in a sketchy trifecta at the West Wyalong trots.

And that’s because Meta has been very public about its plans to throw even more money into the gaping maw of the Metaverse – proving once and for all that even the smartest robots can, and will, fall victim to the sunk cost fallacy of making life better, whether we like it or not.

 

TO MARKETS

As mentioned, local markets are having a wibble and a wobble this morning, down 0.6% by lunch, lead down by two-thirds of Wall Street and a deep dive by our local Materials sector.

Aussie diggers have fallen hard, down 3.29% between brekky and lunch, with InfoTech (-1.98%) and Health (-0.67%) catching a contact-slump from Old Mr Sad Sack in the corner.

But, there’s some good news – Utilities (+1.82%) and Industrials (+1.19%) are chugging along nicely, with Financials straggling along behind them, picking up the tab to the tune of an 0.80% gain.

In Large Caps this morning, the Art Vandelay Memorial Trophy for Short Bursts of Excellence in Import / Export Logistics goes to QUBE Holdings (ASX:QUB), after it revealed “continued high volumes and margin improvement across most parts of its business” have contributed to a strong start to FY23.

The company has enjoyed a modest-ish 5.43% rise this morning, after releasing a 124-page slide deck so densely-packed with transport icons you could clog the diesel injectors of the average Mack truck just by leaving it on the dashboard.

Sagging and dragging the rest of the Materials sector into a profound funk was Fortescue (ASX:FMG), which has fallen 6.8% this morning after revealing to the market that everything would have been fine if it weren’t for rising costs, falling iron ore prices and those damned meddling kids.

Time to peer through the neighbours’ venetians to see what they’re up to…

 

NOT THE ASX

In the US, a rout among the big tech stocks is giving everyone a case of the deep-down willies, and it seems no one’s quote sure which way is up.

Steady Eddy Sunarto reports that the Dow Jones finished higher by 0.6%, but both the S&P 500 and tech heavy Nasdaq were down by 0.6% and 1.6% respectively.

“The US economy appears to have bounced back from two negative GDP readings with a solid 2.6% improvement,” Eddy writes, with back-up from OANDA analyst Edward Moya, who says that the “strong headline number is welcome news, but when you dig into the numbers it is clear that an economic slowdown is here”.

In Asia, it’s not a disaster but it’s not too happy either, right across the region, with Hong Kong falling 0.25% and Shanghai dropping 0.47% in early trade, while Japan’s Nikkei has dipped 0.40%.

 

ASX SMALL CAP WINNERS

Here are the best performing ASX small cap stocks for October 4 [intraday]:

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

WordPress Table
In Small Caps, we have yet another bolter on our hands, this time in the form of The Company Soon To Be Known As The Company Formerly Known As Tempo (ASX:TPP), which has shot up some 75% today after announcing two things:

1. It made a modest profit.
2. It is changing its name to the far catchier GreenHy2, and get a new ticker along the way.

Also on the rise this morning is Cobre (ASX:CBE), which jagged a sudden 35% leap after telling the market that it had drilled another hole, had a look at what came out and even used the ever-reliable portable XRF on it, and there is copper in the sample.

In a solid “yeah, that’s good enough” moment, investors jumped back in again – it’s nowhere near the copper miner’s efforts from earlier this year, but a gain’s a gain’s a gain. Again.

Brief mention here (and more to come later today), is Calix (ASX:CXL), which got a letter from the government and it wasn’t good news.

Calix had been told it would be on the receiving end of a $30 million grant to do its carbon capture thing by the Morrison government. But… the new government has decided that it wants to go a different way, and the $30 million has evaporated with the stroke of a pen.

It’s a kick in the guts for Calix, which is down 15.8% so far for the day.

 

ASX SMALL CAP LOSERS

Here are the most-worst performing ASX small cap stocks for October 4 [intraday]:

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

WordPress Table