Aussie markets have opened slightly lower this morning, edging down 0.3% when the bell rang to start proceedings.

However, there’s a somewhat tremulous effort being made to get back to Net Zero, so if everyone could all hold hands, close our eyes and just really, really believe, there’s still an outside chance we could get this bird off the ground again today.

(Update: We did it! Kinda. The benchmark made it allll the way to +0.1%, but it’s easing as the early afternoon. Post-lunch food coma sets in.)

Because while it’s often been said that nothing exceeds like excess (or is that something about success?), it’s helpful to remember that if all else fails, there’s always the option of simply turning yourself into a grossly contrarian caricature in order to fight for the things that you think are important.

It’s a lesson playing out in the grand US state of Wyoming, where local lawmakers have decided that the best defence against the creeping encroachment of all those Hippy-Dippy, California-Enviro-Weenie electric vehicles is to simply legislate them out of existence.

Republican state senator Jim Anderson is the megamind behind the Phasing Out New Electric Vehicle Sales by 2035 bill, which would – as the title suggests – outright ban the sale of EVs in Wyoming, in an effort to protect that state’s petroleum industry.

Which, on the one hand, is fair enough – the oil industry is Big Bikkies in Wyoming, currently holding a whopping 2% of the United States’ total crude oil, and a truly massive 3% of its natural gas.

So, obviously the oil game is a vital state industry that employs literally dozens of hard-working Americans, and as such the entire state needs to be  protected from the evils of science and rational thinking and cars that go “fzzzzzzzz” instead of “vroom vroom”.

Plus, I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Wyoming in the middle of winter, but it gets crazy cold there sometimes, so it probably couldn’t hurt to have the whole thing warmed up another couple of degrees, right?

There’s zero doubt that the good senator and his petrol-huffing cronies earnestly believe that they’re doing the right thing for Wyoming.

And the Good Lord in all His Divine Mercy knows that if America’s War on Drugs taught that country anything, it’s that outlawing something is guaranteed to stop people from wanting to buy it.

But the legislation will put Wyoming’s Republicans on a collision course with America’s favourite adopted emerald magnate – and despite all of his disgustingly massive quantities of wealth, it’ll be a pretty tall order for him to teach his self-driving cars to navigate a rabid pack of “all hat, no cattle” lawmakers from that great state’s sweeping plains.

 

TO MARKETS

The ASX 200 benchmark has struggled to gain a foothold this morning, with both Materials (-1.41%) and Utilities (-1.71%) weighing pretty heavily on an otherwise fairly solid set of sector performances.

But as we rumbled into lunchtime, the market had risen back into positive territory, climbing to +0.2% – a remarkable feat of perseverance and good, old-fashioned hard yakka.

Up the top, doing all the work, are Health Care (+1.55%) and Consumer Staples (1.22%), with the remaining sectors all middling and muddling along for the ride.

Up the top end of town, there are a couple of techies in the charts this morning.

SiteMinder (ASX:SDR) is up 5.3% on no fresh news to the ASX, but the more interesting climber this morning is Novonix (ASX:NVX), which – again, on no news – is up 8.5% for the day and 19.7% for the week, quite some time after the company announced it had good news about its agreement to be the exclusive supplier of graphite anode material to the excitingly-named KORE Power.

The big mover of the day so far, though, is Adelong Gold (ASX:ADG), which has bolted by a full 142% this morning on news that a follow-up drilling program at Gibraltar has turned up a reasonable set of intercepts, which look like this:

  • 1m @ 4.99g/t Au from 11 metres (3DGIB007);
  • 3m @ 12.57g/t Au from 20 metres (3DGIB007)
    • including 1m intersection at 34.6g/t Au (3DGIB007);
  • 1m @ 18.55g/t Au from 78 metres (3DGIB007);
  • 6m @ 2.79g/t Au from 90 metres (3DGIB008);
    • Including 1m @ 8.58g/t Au; and
  • 1m @ 10.75g/t Au from Surface (3DGIB009

It’s a huge rise for the mining minnow, but it’s safe to say that at +142% this morning, it’s definitely mooning even harder than Molly Meldrum saying an overly-familiar on-stage farewell to his old mate, Elton John:

 

 

And for that horrifying visual, I’d just like to say “You. Are. Welcome.”

Let’s take a look overseas to see if there’s some eyebleach available from Japan or something…

 

NOT THE ASX

It was deathly quiet on Wall Street overnight, because the markets there were closed for Martin Luther King Jr Day and everyone was relaxing, taking time to reflect on what the civil rights movement did for the United States, how it’s all gone horribly wrong in the past few years and wondering how on earth the city of Boston thought they could honour Dr King with a statue of an enormous bronze dong being manhandled in a park.

Meanwhile, The Nikkei has climbed 1.14% this morning in the wake of Japan and India holding their first-ever official joint fighter jet drill near Tokyo.

Japan has brought Four F-2 and four F-15 fighters to the 11-day air combat training around Hyakuri Air Base in Ibaraki Prefecture, northeast of Tokyo, with India bringing four Soviet-designed Su-30MKI fighters and, naturally, providing tech support.

And, because we’re still clearly in need of something to get the sight of a gruesome geriatric arse out of our minds, here’s a small dog smashing out an absolute banger.

 

 

In China and Hong Kong, Shanghai is down around 1.4% and the Hang Seng is 0.65% lower in very early trade.

Meanwhile, crypto is booming harder than a Ukranian anti-tank grenade, with the Grand Old Man of the Funny Money scene, Bitcoin, back above US$21,000 again for the first time since early November, and has finally (after about 381 days) moved back above its 200-day moving average.

Rob “Finally, some good news” Badman reports that while BTC’s value is rising fast, so is the currency’s hash rate, making it harder for new coins to be minted “because of more competition between miners effectively crowding the network”.

As always, Rob’s got all the details (and more) over at Mooners and Shakers.

 

ASX SMALL CAP WINNERS

Here are the best performing ASX small cap stocks for January 17 [intraday]:

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

Code Company Price % Volume Market Cap
ADG Adelong Gold Limited 0.0155 121% 49,620,755 $3,211,756
MEB Medibio Limited 0.0015 50% 250,000 $3,320,594
CZN Corazon Ltd 0.027 35% 5,568,417 $12,206,611
CCE Carnegie Cln Energy 0.002 33% 1,519,523 $23,463,861
ROO Roots Sustainable 0.002 33% 287,314 $1,558,829
TD1 Tali Digital Limited 0.004 33% 43,548,011 $8,325,467
IPT Impact Minerals 0.01 25% 20,981,462 $19,850,964
OAU Ora Gold Limited 0.01 25% 2,259,041 $7,873,850
XTC Xantippe Res Ltd 0.006 20% 11,568,300 $51,460,174
PRS Prospech Limited 0.033 18% 46,682 $2,472,361
LNU Linius Tech Limited 0.0035 17% 319,937 $8,938,239
MHC Manhattan Corp Ltd 0.007 17% 862,428 $9,157,672
MOB Mobilicom Ltd 0.007 17% 572,139 $7,987,678
NZS New Zealand Coastal 0.0035 17% 250,000 $3,381,015
IND Industrial Minerals 0.39 16% 251,705 $9,999,750
DOU Douugh Limited 0.015 15% 7,056,307 $12,770,366
TRE Toubani Resources 0.19 15% 58,761 $5,412,715
VR1 Vection Technologies 0.072 14% 1,133,718 $70,975,105
SZL Sezzle Inc. 0.59 13% 1,101,321 $107,465,643
EOS Electro Optic Sys. 0.655 13% 310,126 $99,316,883
A3D Aurora Labs Limited 0.035 13% 615,420 $5,708,900
MBK Metal Bank Ltd 0.044 13% 99,045 $10,782,935
FDV Frontier Digital Ltd 0.8 13% 193,976 $269,314,254
BRK Brookside Energy Ltd 0.0135 13% 9,159,032 $60,174,548
GGE Grand Gulf Energy 0.027 13% 2,457,643 $37,118,656
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In Small Caps news, and aside from the aforementioned rocket ride by Adelong Gold, Corazon Mining (ASX:CZN) has also caught the attention of investors, adding 30.0% today on high-grade lithium assay results from spodumene-bearing pegmatite within the Miriam Nickel Sulphide Project in the Eastern Goldfields region of Western Australia.

There are a couple of FinTech players on the rise this morning as well, with Douugh (ASX:DOU) up 15.3% and Sezzle (ASX:SZL) climbing 7.69% on no particular news, but likely on the heels of a broader sector-wide hustle.

And rounding out the Top Three to Talk About today are the space-boffins at Electro Optic Systems (ASX:EOS), which – again – not really much in the way of news for quite some time, but enjoying being on the right end of a 12.7% move today.

 

ASX SMALL CAP LOSERS

Here are the most-worst performing ASX small cap stocks for January 17 [intraday]:

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

Code Company Price % Volume Market Cap
ALT Analytica Limited 0.001 -50% 1,000,000 $9,227,602
MTH Mithril Resources 0.003 -25% 209,999 $13,052,361
MTL Mantle Minerals Ltd 0.002 -20% 8,466,666 $13,364,013
TZL TZ Limited 0.08 -16% 1,000 $21,157,271
AHN Athena Resources 0.011 -15% 11,966,731 $11,316,078
WWI West Wits Mining Ltd 0.019 -14% 5,090,686 $44,990,829
ATU Atrum Coal Ltd 0.007 -13% 313,238 $11,133,593
EMT Emetals Limited 0.0115 -12% 6,218,491 $11,050,000
FAU First Au Ltd 0.004 -11% 1,250 $4,283,970
PO3 Purifloh Ltd 0.21 -11% 25,000 $7,408,022
IMR Imricor Med Sys 0.295 -11% 7,188 $49,944,716
LKY Locksleyresources 0.06 -10% 30,000 $2,307,966
DRA DRA Global Limited 1.705 -10% 30,584 $103,379,946
CLZ Classic Min Ltd 0.009 -10% 3,497,294 $8,762,253
KTA Krakatoa Resources 0.039 -9% 285,574 $14,822,526
APC Aust Potash Ltd 0.02 -9% 2,355,818 $20,311,922
LSR Lodestar Minerals 0.005 -9% 5,946,009 $9,561,405
CSX Cleanspace Holdings 0.5 -9% 8,721 $42,360,738
14D 1414 Degrees Limited 0.073 -9% 29,067 $16,158,837
M2R Miramar 0.073 -9% 80,356 $5,654,539
MCM Mc Mining Ltd 0.375 -9% 25,999 $163,049,451
BLY Boart Longyear 1.95 -8% 1,026 $630,310,482
CPO Culpeo Minerals 0.11 -8% 105,654 $7,213,074
SHG Singular Health 0.11 -8% 75,350 $8,452,420
DVL Dorsavi Ltd 0.011 -8% 202,395 $5,682,075
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