If you’re having a rough morning, it’s time to put your worries to one side, because it’s odds-on that however badly you’ve fouled the nest this morning, we’ve got a few shining examples that will make your mistakes seem minor in comparison.

For starters, staff at Chester High School in Delaware got a shock when they took delivery of a box of “school supplies”, which turned out to be half a dozen firearms.

Local police say the guns were meant to be delivered to a not-at-all-dodgy “avid gun collector”, at his auto repair workshop a few towns over. How that hasn’t raised eyebrows is anyone’s guess.

FedEx has blamed the fiasco on a paperwork bungle, which seems to be an ongoing problem Stateside, especially for one elderly Missouri woman who has learnt the hard way to read things before she signs them.

The issue: a pre-paid funeral package she bought for her and her husband that failed to take into account the possibility that the old man would croak before she did.

That, sadly, is how things have panned out, and the woman is incandescent with Old Lady Rage that her dearly departed will lie in an unmarked grave until she’s ready to join him, after her insurance company refused to stump up for a headstone until the pair of them were in the ground.

The woman says she’s been given two options: leave the old man in an unmarked plot, or cough up some more money to cover the immediate expense, leaving her partially uninsured and – given the state of the insurance market in the US – highly likely to be dumped in a field if she’s unable to meet the added expense before she’s gone to meet her maker.

But when it comes to poor planning, our hearts go out to the people of the northeastern military port city of Alexandroupoli, in Greece – after the US Navy (part of it, anyway) pulled into port and did a total Ron Swanson on the townsfolk.

The hungry sailors, tired of eating horrible on-ship Navy rations, ate the town’s entire supply of bacon and eggs, leaving locals with growling bellies and a burning desire to squeeze their chickens extra hard for a few days, next time they know the Americans are on the way to say hi.

 

TO MARKETS

Joy of joys, the Aussie markets have opened on a positive note, jumping 21 points from yesterday’s sub-7,000 point close before continuing to stack on the kilos over the course of the morning for a 0.6% gain.

Across the sectors, it’s the age-old tale of “win some, lose some”, as Materials (+1.26%), Information Technology (+2.03%), and Energy (+1.52%) do the heavy lifting, while Telcos (-0.93%) and Consumer Staples (-0.99%) struggle to breathe and Health Care quietly flatlines in the corner.

The Big Story from the Big Caps this morning comes from Domino’s (ASX:DMP), which has decided to announce a billion things all at once today – which has delighted investors and pushed its price up 9.1%.

In a nutshell: Aussie Domino’s says it’s acquired three national markets in Asia, already Domino’s branded, adding 287 corporate-owned stores to its portfolio – 240 stores in Malaysia, 38 stores in Singapore and 9 stores in the vital and vibrant market-making Cambodia.

On top of that news, Domino’s France – known locally as “Le Pizza Catastrophique” – is losing its CEO, Andrew Bradley, who is likely to feel a sense of ennui after news of his departure added to the upward trend.

Domino’s says the incoming French supremo, Joel Tissier, will be delivered in 30 minutes, or he’s free – but if you could still tip the driver, that’d be great.

Big Guy Loser this morning is Heartland Group Holdings (ASX:HGH), whose successful $130m cap raise has been met with a forest of thumbs-down from the market, dropping nearly 12% since emerging from yesterday’s trading halt.

 

NOT THE ASX

A rapid glance at what’s happened in America overnight, and Our Man Eddy Sunarto reports that US stocks had a choppy session after a slab of weak economic data hit the ears of investors with a satisfying Thwap!

The US Manufacturing PMI (purchasing managers index) data, which is a timely indicator of business conditions, fell the most since May 2020.

In the services sector, the S&P Global PMI came in at 44.1, lower than the forecast of 49.2.

New home sales data also plunged for the month of July, confirming the cooling of the US housing market.

Wall Street swung between wins and losses but at day’s end, the S&P 500 and Dow fell by around 0.5% while the Nasdaq ended flat.

In Asia, things are as limp as long-forgotten noodles, with Hong Kong shares leading the race to the bottom of the bowl, down -0.95%.

Shanghai’s not that far behind on -0.78% and Japan has struggled to a -0.33% decline as investors battle a gigantic lizard that has emerged from the sea to lay waste to the city of Tokyo. Again.

In commodities, oil and gas have gone their separate ways, down -0.27% and up +0.89% respectively, and metals have lost some of their shine this morning, returning gold (-0.21%), silver (-0.66%) and copper (-0.87%) before lunch.

In CryptoTown, where the swings are like roundabouts and the crossword clues make no sense, investors are waiting on whatever emissions emerge from Jackson’s Hole later this week when US Fed guy Jerome Powell opens his mouth to belch out a state.

Obvs, there’s heaps more happening in that space. Go read Badman’s Mooners & Shakers, because he knows what’s happening.

 

ASX SMALL CAP WINNERS

Here are the best performing ASX small cap stocks for August 24 [intraday]:

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In Small Caps, there’s a lithium speccie tearing the sky a new butthole, after Arcadia Minerals (ASX:AM7) announced a face-melting 560% increase in its JORC mineral resource estimate.

The highlights of the announcement just keep getting better and better as we read them, including the aforementioned MRE increase to 85.2 million tonnes @ 633ppm for 286,909t Li2CO3 (LCE), while Cyclone Test Work indicates that a concentrate of 59.6 million tonnes @ 817ppm for 259,231t Li2CO3 could be produced.

The ore body is at surface from 0.2m to 12m and open to depth, and current exploration has only covered only 19% of 14 exposed pans in the Bitterwasser District.

With numbers like that, it’s no wonder Arcadia’s price was up more than 133% at one stage this morning, before easing into the lunch break.

On the opposite side of the coin was EML Payments (ASX: EML), after advising that its Sentenial business has identified recent fraudulent activity relating to an identified set of fraudulent merchants within its direct debit processing business.

The company confidently said its losses won’t exceed $7.9 million, obviously failing to take into account the -15.5% caning investors handed out.

And while we’re talking falling numbers, we have to mention Wagners (ASX:WGN), whose FY22 net profit slump bravely-but-unwisely issued a -23.6% challenge to investors.

The investors appear to have won, sending its price down -24.1%, achieving in a matter of hours a better slump than the one it took Wagners all year to put together.

 

ASX SMALL CAP LOSERS

Here are the most-worst performing ASX small cap stocks for August 24 [intraday]:

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