Aussie markets have opened with a modest 0.5% bump this morning, following what looks like a world-wide Happy Day trend, after Wall St added a few bob to the bottom line overnight.

Wall Street has long held a fascination for a lot of people – but to outsiders, it’s an impenetrable fortress of jargon and gatekeepers, specifically designed to keep the upward flow of money concentrated in one area – and to be as baffling as possible to those not in the know.

However, one man in America set out to change all that – to turn the markets into a television spectacle… a game show where there are no contestants, but those playing along at home can make some serious bank. Or not. In fact, mostly not.

That man is Jim Cramer – a bald-headed numbers wonk who has managed to parlay a face made for radio and boundless crackhead energy into a TV career that has spanned decades and become the laughing stock of meme-loving stock nerds.

 

asx lunch CYM
Jim Cramer, pictured here with magician David Blaine after learning the trick to making everyone’s money disappear. Pic via Getty Images.

 

I’ll leave it to Jon Stewart, comedian and former host of The Daily Show to explain why Cramer’s high-octane rants in the lead up to the 2008 disaster that nearly broke the world.

 

 

But that’s ancient history – and admittedly a little unfair, because Cramer’s just doing what he’s paid to do… make a spectacle of himself and encourage people who don’t know what they’re doing to put their money into things that he kind-of explains.

Since then Cramer’s kept his job – you can still see him on CNBC, as his transformation from “Balding Know-it-all” into “Scaly, Bug-Eyed Madagascan Chameleon in a Human Skinsuit” nears completion… and his ability to be way, waaaaay off beam so frequently it’s funny when it comes to picking stocks is on full display.

You can wade through reddit’s home of glorious lunacy over at /r/wallstreetbets for the hivemind take on Cramer’s latest hot take – or take a look at one of the most entertaining Twitter accounts, ever: @CramerTracker, which follows Jim Cramer like a well-meaning stalker, taking the piss wherever possible.

Case in point:

 

 

Jim… bruh… that laptop. The image of it is seared into my brain, and I ask The Lord Almighty why I was cursed with functional eyes and then exposed to Cramer’s lappy that looks like it’s been dusted in equal measures with TV studio make-up and gross, crunchy flakes of reptilian skin.

I’d expect to see something like that on an episode of Hoarders… not on the desk of a man who is a self-proclaimed brazillionaire.

Filthy rich, or just plain filthy? We’ll let you decide…

Personal hygiene aside, Cramer’s become such a synonym for terrible stock picking, Tuttle Capital Management in the US filed The Inverse Cramer ETF (SJIM), designed to watch his stock picks as closely as possible, and inverse them completely.

You can read all the details on that one here, but needless to say, Ol’ Mate Cramer is not amused.

The smart move from Cramer at this point is, however, quite obvious: Get up on his TV show, and tell all his viewers to sink as much money as they can into that ETF, create a black hole of terrible investing advice and reduce the entire market to a superdense singularity of financial paradox.

With a bit of luck, and a little bit of elbow grease, it could be the Next Big Bang and a fresh start for the universe as a whole.

In the meantime, though, it’s probably time to take a look at how things are travelling a little closer to home.

 

TO MARKETS

At lunchtime today, the ASX benchmark was 0.6% ahead of the curve, following a solid night on Wall Street which saw all three major indices up more than 1.0% across the board.

Local markets are being driven by Utilities (+1.75%) and InfoTech (1.38%), with Consumer Staples the only laggard daring to dip its toe into negative territory, down 0.13% for the morning.

The only Big Kid doing well enough to mention today is Domain Holdings (ASX:DHG), the data nerds behind Australia’s real estate market.

DHG is up 5.6% today, following a reasonable forecast for 2023 that hit the market a couple of days back, saying the company’s FY23 H1 EBITDA “is expected to be around $48 million, while a material improvement in FY23 H2 EBITDA is anticipated with higher revenue and an additional $15-$20 million cost benefit versus H1”.

There are some absolute clangers on the losing side of the coin today, though – despite the overall market performance.

That includes the $915m market cap 29Metals (ASX:29M), which has dropped a gut-wrenching 17.8% so far today after advising the market yesterday that things aren’t exactly rosy at the moment:

  • copper metal production is expected to be approximately flat, year-on-year;
  • zinc metal production is expected to increase by approximately 5-10%, year-on-year; and
  • gold and silver metal production are expected to be 10-15% lower, year-on-year

Which is obviously no bueno in the eyes of investors so far today.

 

NOT THE ASX

In the US overnight, it was a robust, solid and dependable-looking Wall Street on show, rallying nicely to drive the Dow Jones up 1.60%, the tech heavy NASDAQ up 1.54%, and the S&P 500 higher by 1.49%. Noice.

As Nadine “The Newsroom Den Mother” McGrath reported this morning, that’s off the back of US consumer confidence hitting an eight-month high in December as inflation eased and the labour market remained strong.

The Conference Board said its consumer confidence index rose to 108.3 in December, which is the highest reading since April and up from 101.4 in November.

In Europe, stocks were also enjoying some Christmas optimism, with the FTSE 100 up 1.72%, Euronext 100 rising 1.84% and the DAX rallying 1.54%.

In Asia, Japan’s Nikkei has climbed just 0.17%, despite one Otsu City worker’s stroke of great luck, when his digger unearthed a stash of 5 million Yen in amongst the refuse at the local dump.

Well… it’s actually good news for the city, which has confiscated the money for now, since Digger-San was on the clock when he found it. But, should someone come forward to claim the cash, he’s in line for a reward between 5% and 20%.

Elsewhere in Asia, Hong Kong markets are on the rise, up 1.82% for the day, while Shanghai markets are also trending higher, up 0.46% in early trade.

In Shiny Things news, the price of gold has fallen back 0.18%, while industrial metals rose. Nickel was up 3.23%, zinc rose 2.02%, tin was up 0.37%, aluminium rose 0.61% and iron ore was also up 0.27%.

The price of oil was also back up with Brent crude putting on 3.30%, WTI up 3.16%, while natural gas also rose 2.58%.

In Crypto news, Rob “The Peloton” Badman reports that Coinbase is the latest to eye the cycle bottom (the dirty buggers…), after figuring out that 50% of Bitcoin holders are now underwater on their investment. #GlubGlubGlub.

As always, there’s more to the story than I’ve got time for here, so head on over to Mooners and Shakers for the good oil on all the pretend money you can handle.

 

ASX SMALL CAP WINNERS

Here are the best performing ASX small cap stocks for December 22 [intraday]:

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

Wordpress Table Plugin

 

In Small Caps news, there’s a bunch of little teeny tiny company’s enjoying significant surges.

Of particular note is Cyprium Metals (ASX:CYM), up 29.3% today after revealing an offtake agreement for about 100% (~140,000 tonnes) of the Copper Cathode produced during Phase 1 of the Nifty Copper Project Restart, alongside a US$35M Secured Offtake Prepayment Facility through Transamine SA.

This Offtake Prepayment Facility is part of the targeted $240 million to $260 million debt funding package to finance the restart of the Nifty Copper Project, which is expected to include senior secured financing and secured offtake financing.

Meanwhile, PolarX (ASX:PXX) is back above the $0.02 mark after falling yesterday, still buoyant from the news that Northern Star (ASX:NST) bought into it, big time.

And Victory Metals (ASX:VTM) is up 11.4% this morning after reporting a further 42 AC holes report significant Rare Earth Element (REE) clay-hosted mineralisation across North Stanmore with grades from the latest assays ranging up to 4974ppm, which included HREO/TREO ratio of 45% and NdPr + DyTb at 25.6% of total REEs.

 

ASX SMALL CAP LOSERS

Here are the most-worst performing ASX small cap stocks for December 22 [intraday]:

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

Wordpress Table Plugin

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