Aussie markets opened today, but you probably already knew that. But what you might not know is that it climbed 0.7% at open, and has managed to hover at or near that for most of the morning.
When the bell rang for everyone to bust out their Coleman Coolers (Coleman… Keeping Your Sh-t Lukewarm in Australia for over 120 Years™), take a seat and chomp deeply into the unspeakable horrors of a service station “meat” pie, the benchmark was sitting at 0.57%.
But before we get into the market news, there’s something super-duper-important to inform you about, and you know this is legit because it’s coming direct from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation.
You know… the ones who had Kennedy knocked in the ’60s because he was just too beautiful to be president, and now waste countless millions of dollars looking for the aliens who abducted their sister.
Anyhow – the FBI has issued a warning to anyone using public phone chargers, the existence of which comes as something of a surprise to me.
But that’s probably because I don’t leave the house. Ever. I am literally chained to my desk and forced to write dumb stuff about important things. Please send help.
The warning from the Feds is about a practice called “Juice Jacking”, where tech-savvy miscreants use their 733T Haxx0r skills to infect a victim’s phone with malware, which is very different to the Juice Jacking that was popular when I was trapped in the enduring hell of an all-boys high school.
The release from the Denver office of the FBI is blaming “bad actors” for the problem, and have issued an arrest warrant for Steven Segal. Har har. #bestjokeever.
According to the Washington Post, Juice Jacking is “a cybercrime in which a hacker uses public USB ports to steal data, such as credit card numbers, or install malware on a user’s device.”
According to Fox News, it also poses an enormous risk to election security, is making every kid in the US into “a transgender” and will have turned every frog in America gay within the next three weeks.
The simple solution, obviously, is to make sure your phone is charged before you leave the house, and not spend eight hours a day playing Clash of Angry Birds or whatever ridiculously addictive dopamine-hitter the kids (actually, bored housewives) are into these days.
The FBI suggests ‘not running out of battery in the first place’, which is about as helpful as Paris Hilton telling people to “stop being poor”.
But at the very least, it’s worth carrying your own charging cable and begging someone to let you plug your phone into their computer to charge up – so you can deliver your malware to someone else, without the hassle of having to deal with someone else’s.
TO MARKETS
As previously mentioned, the ASX 200 benchmark is higher by 0.57% this morning, stubbornly refusing to track Wall Street’s overnight action, because that’s a confusing jumble of data and news today.
Things are a bit mixed across the local sectors today, though… we’ve got seven in the green and four in the red, with Materials rallying again to lead the way on +1.94%.
Local markets are being hamstrung by a not-great turnout from the bloated, corpulent Financials sector, which is lagging in last place on -0.35%, which is super-frustrating because I have tried and tried and tried to be encouraging, but nothing seems to be getting through!
They just want to play Monopoly all day, which never works out because they all want to be the banker every game, and there’s always a fight over who gets to be the fancy Top Hat and who gets stuck being the thimble.
Any advice would be appreciated, because I really am at my wits end with them.
Up the top end of town, Infratil (ASX:IFT) is trading 5.2% higher. I will admit, quite openly, that I had never, ever heard of that company until this morning – so I did some poking around and I still don’t know what they do.
But the company has a market cap well-north of $6 billion, and describes itself as “domiciled in New Zealand”, so it must be something pretty fancy.
Honestly… who says “domiciled” these days? People who aren’t based, that’s who.
NOT THE ASX
Overnight, Wall Street got confusing, delivering a bag of mixed results despite some pretty happy news for the Tech sector.
Earlybird Eddy was up even earlier than usual this morning, all excited because the Nasdaq has “technically” entered a bull market.
“Far from being in a crash-landing recession after the near-death experience in the banking sector, the markets are instead flying sky high,” Eddy says.
“At Monday’s New York close of 13,051 points, the Nasdaq 100 index is up 20.15% so far in 2023, and 25% higher than its one-year low of 10,440 back in January.”
(A bull market is defined as a rise of 20% or more over at least a two-month period, in case you’re new to this and were wondering WTF we’re on about.)
Despite tech nerds celebrating their own version of the Running of the Bulls, the Nasdaq sadly drooped a little overnight, something it says “has never happened to it before”, and is blaming on “pressure at work, not eating right… look, I’m just super-stressed at the moment. Yes, I still think you’re beautiful… I’m sorry. Can we just go to sleep and try this again tomorrow?”
I’m paraphrasing, of course – but the end result of last night’s efforts was the Nasdaq falling 0.43%, landing right on top of an unsuspecting S&P and squashing it flat (0.00%), to the delight of the cigar chompers and golfing buddies at the Dow, which saw that index climb a very modest 0.29%, because rich people don’t tip.
In Japan, the Nikkei is up 0.66% on news that the Noble Sport of Sumo has a new rising star.
His name is Yuya Okayama, he stands 180cm tall and tips the scale at a congestive heart failure-inducing 130kg.
“So what?” I hear you ask. “Clive Palmer’s like twice his size.”
To which I respond: “Yuya Okayama is only 11 years old.”
Here’s video proof that I am not making this up… but be warned, if you’re at work and they have a zero-tolerance policy on watching half-naked fat kids slapping each other’s boy-tiddies, then you might wanna wait until you’re on the train to watch it.
In China, where they are 100% growing 120kg six-year-old super soldiers in gigantic test tubes because “Japan’s fatties are a threat to our sovereignty and national security”, Shanghai’s market is up 0.28%, while the Hang Seng has dropped 0.76%.
And it’s (potentially) a big day for Ethereum, because there’s a hard fork today which I don’t have time to write about right now, so here’s one I prepared earlier.
ASX SMALL CAP WINNERS
Here are the best performing ASX small cap stocks for April 12 [intraday]:
Swipe or scroll to reveal full table. Click headings to sort:
Code Company Price % Volume Market Cap FIJ Fiji Kava Limited 0.006 100% 12,670,062 $1,200,266 PNTR Panthermetalsltd 0.002 100% 119,000 $27,313 SIO Simonds Grp Ltd 0.14 27% 115,560 $39,589,710 HRE Heavy Rare Earths 0.125 25% 983,621 $5,948,793 TSL Titanium Sands Ltd 0.011 22% 199,999 $12,657,581 CDR Codrus Minerals Ltd 0.105 22% 743,527 $3,476,980 RLG Roolife Group Ltd 0.012 20% 3,786,823 $7,155,581 JRV Jervois Global Ltd 0.11 20% 38,574,178 $191,343,446 BEZ Besragoldinc 0.22 19% 8,543,811 $65,464,449 OZM Ozaurum Resources 0.063 19% 1,020,000 $6,731,000 MRL Mayur Resources Ltd 0.19 19% 150,000 $47,289,038 1AE Auroraenergymetals 0.13 18% 198,305 $13,502,960 ASP Aspermont Limited 0.02 18% 1,014,285 $41,328,481 5EA 5Eadvanced 0.87 17% 1,479,774 $212,734,161 GRE Greentechmetals 0.105 17% 153,433 $2,906,100 ADX ADX Energy Ltd 0.007 17% 142,250 $21,207,748 AVW Avira Resources Ltd 0.0035 17% 91,162,206 $6,401,370 GTG Genetic Technologies 0.0035 17% 2,495,012 $34,624,974 INP Incentiapay Ltd 0.007 17% 755,000 $7,590,382 MOB Mobilicom Ltd 0.007 17% 73,507 $7,987,678 SAN Sagalio Energy Ltd 0.014 17% 40,086 $2,455,922 CAI Calidus Resources 0.285 16% 4,297,857 $107,689,956 BUR Burleyminerals 0.29 16% 5,000 $15,353,589 ERW Errawarra Resources 0.15 15% 194,037 $7,865,520 OLL Openlearning 0.015 15% 83,828 $3,482,298
Disappointingly, the Small Caps scene is bereft of any moonshots today – the best it’s been able to muster is a still-impressive 35% haul for Heavy Rare EARTHS (ASX:HRE).
Don’t ask me why they insist on shouting the last word in their name… they just do, okay?
HRE has jumped on news that it’s drilled into high grade intercepts of up to 4839ppm TREO at its newly-discovered Western Zone at Cowalinya, where the company says 159 mineralised intercepts have been drilled, covering approximately 13km2.
The results confirm the potential to host a material increase in rare earths resources – which are so hot right now – with the company saying it’s working its way through the required process to upgrade its current Inferred Resource of 28Mt @ 625ppm TREO, once assays from another 36 holes are in.
Next noteworthy Small Capper is market darling Besra Gold (ASX:BEZ), which is in imminent danger of earning itself a bit of a reputation as a publicity hog, given how often they’re in the news around here.
BEZ has added 21.6% this morning, on no actual news apart from a $300m funding deal, so I guess that’s news. However, spot gold prices are stubbornly remaining above the magic US$2,000/oz mark, and the XGD ASX All Ordinaries Gold index is running second only to the Resources index, up 0.74%.
There’s a bunch of Micro Cappers turning in 18% or better returns this morning, but with both weight and volume worth writing about, it’s another Goldie – Calidus Resources (ASX:CAI) – rounding out the three for this morning.
CAI has spiked 18.4% this morning on the heels of a healthy guidance and outlook report that dropped yesterday, which shows the company on track to produce 31,000 – 36,000oz at AISC A$2,000 – A$2,250/oz. Luvverly.
ASX SMALL CAP LOSERS
Here are the most-worst performing ASX small cap stocks for April 12 [intraday]:
Swipe or scroll to reveal full table. Click headings to sort:
Code Company Price % Volume Market Cap CCE Carnegie Cln Energy 0.001 -50% 169,298 $31,285,147 GGX Gas2Grid Limited 0.001 -50% 2,262,026 $8,154,204 ERAR Energy Resources 0.017 -39% 332,832 $516,793,648 DCX Discovex Res Ltd 0.003 -25% 27,502,478 $13,210,272 ANR Anatara Ls Ltd 0.03 -23% 22,486 $4,677,035 RR1 Reach Resources Ltd 0.004 -20% 2,967,928 $12,387,753 SI6 SI6 Metals Limited 0.004 -20% 700,000 $7,476,973 ICR Intelicare Holdings 0.019 -17% 870,025 $4,805,054 CTO Citigold Corp Ltd 0.005 -17% 812,000 $17,241,955 OAU Ora Gold Limited 0.0025 -17% 3,100,000 $11,810,775 CDT Castle Minerals 0.016 -16% 16,495,328 $21,365,367 SHG Singular Health 0.057 -15% 1,804,821 $7,600,924 ICN Icon Energy Limited 0.006 -14% 152,000 $5,376,096 MRD Mount Ridley Mines 0.003 -14% 1,412,496 $27,247,090 MCM Mc Mining Ltd 0.155 -14% 21,268 $71,939,736 MYE Metarock Group Ltd 0.155 -14% 98,276 $23,578,658 LER Leaf Res Ltd 0.019 -14% 951,640 $45,364,855 LCY Legacy Iron Ore 0.014 -13% 726,764 $102,509,219 ROG Red Sky Energy. 0.0035 -13% 1,198,800 $21,208,909 IMB Intelligent Monitor 0.105 -13% 208 $15,684,035 KSS Kleos 0.105 -13% 7,136 $22,901,222 AZI Altamin Limited 0.06 -12% 129,552 $26,636,739 OPL Opyl Limited 0.03 -12% 35,000 $2,722,212 UCM Uscom Limited 0.04 -11% 25,514 $8,938,615 FGL Frugl Group Limited 0.008 -11% 116,000 $6,883,646