• ASX weathers a US bank collapse storm to finish the day down just 0.5%
  • XEC Emerging Companies index down 0.84% because it was out partying all weekend.
  • The Goldies take the gongs, after the precious metal jumped more than 1.0%

 

Looking at the market today, I am reminded about the time when, as a small child, my mother took me to see John Denver live in concert – by the time the show came to an end, I was quietly surprised that it wasn’t anywhere near as sh-t as I thought it was going to be.

And also because the morning dive by the benchmark at 10:00am reminded me of the time Mr Denver quite famously flew his homemade (for real… dude was nuts) plane directly into the ground and turned it, and his career, into a smoking crater of weird 80s pseudo-religion and regret.

What a time to be alive… or, in Denver’s case, not.

For those of you too young to get this reference, here’s a video of John Denver singing a Christmas song with Kermit the Frog.

 

 

For those of you still baffled, Kermit is the green one with no hair.

The reason for the ructions today has been clear – the second-largest bank collapse in the history of the USA is kind-of hard to miss, and it certainly had the market on edge locally, even though we’d had the weekend to digest what a horrible sh-tshow it had unfolded late last week.

But it’s not the only news in town, obviously… it’s The Oscars today, and you should probably brace yourselves for the worrisome levels of self-pitying headlines about how Every Single Australian Was Robbed and It’s An Outrage over the next 48 hours.

But for now, let’s focus on stuff that’s actually important.

 

FROM THE ASX

A surging gold price (weaker dollar, safe haven in a crisis, yada yada, you know the drill) saw the precious metal up more than 1.0% today, a harbinger of things to come as the US braces for the fallout from the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank.

There are a handful of Aussie-listers who are exposed to the collapse, though, including IkeGPS (ASX:IKE) and Siteminder (ASX:SDR) – both of them are down as a result, -2.42% and -4.76% respectively.

Two ASX companies, ikeGPS and Siteminder, announced this morning that they had millions deposited with SVB, and could be struggling to recoup all of it.

Life360 (ASX:360) said its exposure is expected to be between zero and $5.6 million, with no significant disruption to operations, and it’s down 0.40%.

Xero (ASX:XRO) meanwhile reported a $5m exposure to SVB, which is less than 1% of XRO cash and equivalents as reported 30 September. XRO finished the day 0.39% lower, despite clearly being able to afford a few mil, because it’s gonna have 800 fewer people to pay, thanks to ‘streamlining initiatives’.

But what sucks for US banks (and a handful of ASX-listers) has turned out to be pretty good for Aussie gold producers.

Investors went in hard on Capricorn Metals (ASX:CMM) which spiked big time, up 14.7%, as did Westgold Resources (ASX:WGX), up 13.9%.

The sudden gold rush on the market helped the Materials sector to a 1.03% rise today, against a backdrop of failing fortunes just about everywhere else.

Lowest on the totem pole was – obviously – the Financials sector, where the rush to reduce exposure to the ticking time bomb in the US saw the entire sector there down 1.37%.

And that is a lot for the ASX to absorb, given how bloated that sector is compared to the rest of the bourse.

Financials wasn’t alone in Loser Land, though – InfoTech fell 1.32% and Real Estate dropped 1.22%.

The big long list of Large Caps in the winner’s circle from this morning evaporated as the day wore on and Aussie investors realised that the sky wasn’t falling in – leaving the aforementioned Capricorn at the top of the ladder.

Behind it, Regis Resources (ASX:RRL) did pretty well today, adding a solid 10.0% just because it was there, while the big pharma success story of the day saw Neuren Pharmaceuticals (ASX:NEU) climb 19.3%.

 

ASX SMALL CAP LEADERS

Here are the best performing ASX small cap stocks:

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In Small Caps land, things were – as per usual – a bit scatty and all over the place, but when the dust had settled it was Moho Resources (ASX:MOH) up nearly 27% on news that it’s completed a drill program at its Burracoppin Project in WA, on the hunt for both REEs and gold.

Moho says that it has found “a soil gold anomalism coincident with elevated arsenic values and proximal to shearing and folding, which it believes could be related to sulphide mineralisation in the underlying bedrock” #SoundsDelish.

Flexiroam (ASX:FRX) is at it again, spiking 25% on absolutely no news since it responded to an ASX speeding ticket from the last time it did the same thing – but it’s keeping good company with a lot of other minnows moving around for no discernible reason, other than “the market’s being a bit weird”.

Although one last one that caught my eye is IntelliHR (ASX:IHR), up 13.8% after a counteroffer from Humanforce Holdings came in over the top of a bid by The Access Group to snatch IHR out from under its nose.

Humanforce Holdings had originally offered up $0.11 per share for IHR, which TAG tried to knock off the table with a $0.14 bid of its own.

Humanforce has come back with a $0.165 cash per share, (a 17.86% premium on the TAG offer), and has agreed to delete the IHR material adverse change condition from its original offer as well.

We’ll let you know how it pans out when it does.

 

ASX SMALL CAP LAGGARDS

Here are the least best performing ASX small cap stocks:

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TRADING HALTS

Orion Minerals (ASX:ORN) – Capital raising.

Dorsavi (ASX:DVL) – Capital raising.

Zelira Therapeutics (ASX:ZLD) – Capital raising.

Adavale Resources (ASX:ADD) – Capital raising.

Brightstar Resources (ASX:BTR) – Change of control transaction with Kingwest Resources (ASX:KWR).

Recharge Metals (ASX:REC) – Material project acquisition and capital raising.

PPK Group (ASX:PPK) – Material acquisition.

Kingwest Resources (ASX:KWR) – Change of control transaction with Brightstar Resources (ASX:BTR).

intelliHR (ASX:IHR) – Takeover offer from Humanforce.

Hills (ASX:HIL) – Capital raising.

 

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