Aussie markets shook off the weight of a dour session on Wall Street overnight, jerking spasmodically like a fullback beneath the weight of a couple of meaty forwards at the start of a State of Origin clash.

Straight out of the gate, there were a couple of small caps getting hot and bothered today on lithium and REE finds – but, as the morning wore, market-wide fatigue set in (as it is wont to do), before a sudden rush of energy saw the benchmark lift again to +0.3%, as if it had been given a new lease on life.

Speaking of which, let’s go take a look at the world of medical and scientific breakthroughs, where a team of researchers have obviously gone down a highly unexpected rabbit hole and made a truly startling discovery.

According to the team from University of Edinburgh’s Centre for Regenerative Medicine, in conjunction with the US Department of Health and Human Services in Louisiana, the key to avoiding a liver transplant is to get leprosy.

Yes, leprosy – the disease that is infamous for stories of infected people rotting so badly that their limbs fall off whenever they sneeze, and known for how horrendously contagious it is. So bad, in fact, that sufferers were banished to island colonies in times gone by.

It’s worth noting at this juncture that any verbal communication in that lab would have been a miracle. With team members from both Edinburgh and Louisiana, the clash of accents alone would have been like listening to a conversation between The Proclaimers and a heavily-concussed Nascar driver.

But, somehow, they’ve made it work and, for whatever reason, they were poking around with Mother Nature to find out what happens when armadillos catch leprosy.

It turns out that armadillos aren’t cool with having leprosy, and they get really sick and curl up into a ball like in the cartoons and stuff – BUT, their livers stay healthy.

That’s probably because armadillos don’t like to party, but also because the bacteria that causes leprosy (nasty little bugger called Mycobacterium leprae) enjoys getting into their liver and making new bits to replace any broken ones.

This, of course, is a hugely interesting development, because having a crook liver is an absolute horror show, and having a liver transplant, I can tell you from 100% real actual personal experience, is a profoundly unpleasant experience.

But if all it takes to avoid one is being sent to a tropical island to live in misery until a strong gust of wind blows your old fella into the sea, then sign me up – because that’s a damn-sight better than sitting around being deathly ill for 12 months, hoping for someone to come off their motorbike.

(Serious bit here: If you haven’t already, go and sign up to become an organ donor. A few years ago, someone had signed up, and I ended up with their liver after mine broke – a gift from a stranger that I would be dead without. Please, go here and sign up today).

 

TO MARKETS

Local markets  have cheerfully ignored a downturn on Wall Street overnight to post… modest gains.

By lunchtime, the benchmark was wandering around the +0.2% mark like it had lost its keys, but still had somewhere to be – the excitement was palpable.

Palping hardest was the Telco sector, piling on a 1.31% spurt of super-fast 5G gggggoodness, with Utilities (+0.96%) and Consumer Staples (+0.89%) cheering it on with gains of their own.

Materials and Energy are lagging behind, though, which is often the case when it’s the Telcos hosting the party. They’re down 0.75% and 0.78% respectively, and clearly just want to go home and lie down.

Up the top end of town, Webjet (ASX:WEB) has booked itself a first call ticket to Profit Town, revealing that it’s rebuilt its consumer bookings to pre-pandemic levels and boosting revenue by an “I’ll have the lobster and she’ll have the caviar” 216% over the same period last year.

Investors like it when big fancy numbers like that get thrown around, so the rush for the cheap seats at the back of the plane was on in earnest, with tickets – sorry, shares – now selling 8.72% higher than they were at yesterday’s close.

And PGM playa Zimplats (ASX:ZIM) has climbed a cracking 10.8% this morning, on no news to the ASX so most likely because parent company Implats (the family resemblance is uncanny…) has been given the thumbs up to acquire all shares in South African mid-tier PGM digger Royal Bafokeng.

 

NOT THE ASX

Looking to see what our pop-culture and military back-up overlords got up to last night, and Wall Street had a day best described as “flaccid”.

Early Mornin’ Eddy reports that energy and tech stocks paced Wall Street lower as all three major indices fell – the S&P 500 by 0.74%, the Dow Jones by 0.02% and Nasdaq by 1.47%.

Making the news there was disappointing earnings from Micron that dragged the semiconductor space down, while Target shares got punished 13% after the retailer cut its Q4 outlook.

This is despite US retail sales increasing more than expected in October, by 1.3%, as households stepped up purchases of goods.

In Asia, Japan’s Nikkei is tracking slightly lower, down 0.13% on news that the final-ever episode of popular animated series Ritoru gāru megabotto okutopasu furenjīman has been delayed indefinitely after the strict Japanese Censorship Board determined it was unsuitable for distribution due to a lack of gruesome decapitations.

In Hong Kong, things are off to a sodden start, with the market taking a 1.22% dip the moment the doors were flung open, while Shanghai – as always – is taking a more cautious approach, losing just 0.54% as things get underway there.

In the Crazy Cupboard of Crypto, the rot from the FTX cataclysm continues to spread, with everyone within a mile of the action copping more exposure damage than Scott of the Antarctic’s tinkler every time he stopped for a comfort break.

As always, Rob “It’s just a flesh wound” Badman has all that news and even more over at Mooners and Shakers.

 

ASX SMALL CAP WINNERS

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

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

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There’s a duo of small cappers going tick-tick-tock-boom this morning on separate Big Reveals of REE and lithium finds.

First up is Mt Monger Resources (ASX:MTM), enjoying (yet another) massive spike from its bargain basement price point, adding 45% so far today after tearing the covers off a rare earth element (REE) mineralisation at the Pt Kidman prospect near Laverton, WA.

The Mongers have hit some juicy drilling intercepts that look just like this:

  • 22ELAC048 – 8m @ 1,467ppm TREO, from 22m & 5m @ 1,427ppm TREO, from 31m
  • 22ELAC043 – 6m @ 1,880ppm TREO, from 12m
  • 22ELAC023 – 3m @ 1,577ppm TREO, from 23m & 2m @ 1,191ppm TREO from 33m
  • 22ELAC003 – 2m @ 1,806ppm TREO, from 27m
  • 22ELAC046 – 1m @ 2,107ppm TREO, from 16m

The high value Nd+Pr oxides represent an average of 19% of TREO grade, the high value magnet rare earth oxides represent an average 24% of TREO grade.

Additionally, critical rare earth oxides (CREO) average 23% of TREO, and the heavy rare earth oxides represent an average of 12% of TREO grade.

Meanwhile, on the lithium front, Burley Minerals (ASX:BUR) is looking bigger and burlier than ever, picking up the most-excellently and aptly-named Chubb lithium project in Quebec, just down the road from crowd-favourite Sayona (ASX:SYA) and Piedmont.

Chubb lives up to its glorious name, consisting of 35 contiguous mineral claims in a single block totalling 1,509ha in the Val-d’Or Quebec region in Canada, where drilling has confirmed the presence of spodumene-bearing lithium pegmatites in shallow, multiple parallel dykes extending along a strike of 560m and a corridor width of 240m.

Drilling there has already turned up some solid intercepts, including 2.3m at 2.34% Li2O from 32.3m and 12m at 1.57% Li2O from 108m – and Burley’s trading 37.5% higher this morning.

And lastly, it looks like Bass Oil (ASX:BAS) has managed to negotiate its way from Billion Dollar Baby to Million Dollar Maybe, after its fat-finger typo in yesterday’s ASX announcement had the company sitting on an in-place estimate of more oil than exists in the known universe.

The good news for Bass Oil is that investors are largely a forgiving and understanding mob (Ha!) – and that even with the in-place estimate now measured in the millions of barrels, not billions, it’s still enough to keep punters’ interest on the boil. BAS is up another 22.8% today, taking it to a 94.5% lift for the week. Noice.

 

ASX SMALL CAP LOSERS

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

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