CLOSING BELL: 'How to falter at the last furlong and limp home like a beaten favourite', by the ASX

RooLife is today’s ASX winner after getting its drinks into China’s massive Freshippo market
The Benchmark climbed early but sagged like a horrid old balloon to end the day around +0.5%
Harris tells Credit Suisse “it’s not us, it’s you” and sells off the final 5% of its long-running love affair

With a happy Friday warm-up from the US on Friday, the ASX kicked off the day on a positive note, but faltered in the final furlong to end the day on +0.5%.

There wasn’t much in the way of data to churn through today, prompting many to call the ABS to perform a welfare check and make sure nothing untoward had happened over the weekend.

But it’s most likely the imminent threat to humanity and basic decency posed by the RBA Board’s meeting tomorrow that has kept the market cautiously optimistic, and not zooming off into the stratosphere like I was hoping it would when I woke up this morning.

Here’s what happened.

FROM THE HEADLINES

Mega bank Credit Suisse has, for some time now, been quite pungently on-the-nose – but you know things are grim when a former top shareholder finally decides that enough is enough, and pulls the trigger on selling out completely.

Reuters is reporting that Harris Associates, the former top shareholder that had “remained loyal despite a string of scandals at Credit Suisse”, has offloaded its final 5% stake, which it had already reduced down in January from the 10% it reported in August last year.

The Harris departure from the roster leaves Saudi National Bank well and truly cemented in the top shareholder spot, a large chunk of which it secured when Credit Suisse raised a wallet-busting $6.3 billion to help stem the bank’s horrific bleeding.

Meanwhile in London, there’s been some good news for Sova Capital, a collapsed London broker formerly controlled by Russian banker Roman Avdeev, after London’s High Court ruled that administrators can put into place a credit bidding deal structure to swap a portfolio of Russian shares.

Under the ruling, administrators will be allowed to swap a portfolio of Russian shares held by the broker, nominally valued at 274 million pounds for a 233 million pound creditor claim Avdeev has against Sova Capital’s business.

While that sort of deal is actually quite common in US bankruptcy proceedings, they’re not technically recognised under law in the UK, so the move is something of a novel endeavour for the administrators, as they seek to claw back value after Sova collapsed a year ago due to Western sanctions against Russian businesses over the invasion of Ukraine.

And closer to home, tomorrow is the First Tuesday of the Month – the traditional Feast Day of the Dollar Goblins at the RBA, where decisions are made about how much blood can be squeezed from Aussie turnips who have mortgages and other excruciating debts.

The ANZ has tipped that rates are going to rise again, and that the reason why we’re all going to want to get together and throw hugely-expensive staple foodstuffs at RBA Governor McMoneybag Screwtightener III is because of how appallingly weak wages growth has been.

The RBA likes to use the “annual growth in average non-farm earnings per hour” as its basis for judging how wage growth is going (non-farm so we can’t throw fruit’n’veg at them when the rates go up, probably), and that came in at just 2.9% a few weeks back.

Because they can’t help themselves and just have to tinker with everything, the RBA took that data from the ABS and made “some adjustments”, arriving at an even-worse 2.5% – which gives the Board the excuse it needs to scream “Inflation!” into the mirror three times, summoning the Rate Hike Monster to brutally slay us all.

The ANZ reckons we’re headed for at least 4.0% in the near future, and that a step tomorrow to 3.6% is the logical – if massively unpopular – step for the RBA Board to take.

TO MARKETS

The ASX has enjoyed a positive day, kicking off with a 0.6% jump at open before making slow progress through the day to hit 0.77% by mid afternoon.

And then, just like clockwork, the market just ran out of steam again, withering to 0.5% by the time the bell rang to tell us “there’s no more trading, so it’s time to go to bed”.

The fact that the benchmark finished up for the day was most likely down to a generally positive vibe emanating from Wall Street on Friday, which echoed through the chakras of all Enlightened People throughout the weekend before settling on the ASX floor to make everyone feel “mellow” and “quite groovy”.

There’s not been any radical departures from this morning’s narrative, although consumer discretionary has overtaken InfoTech as today’s Market Sector Merit Certificate Winner – Discreionary has climbed to +2.2% after InfoTech came off the boil a little to settle just below 2.0% for the day.

Energy (-0.6%) and Materials (-0.8%) continue to misbehave, and will be sent home from camp if they don’t get their acts together and start playing nice with the rest of the children.

The Big End Earners are roughly the same as this morning; Block Inc (ASX:SQ2) has continued its bullish run, adding another 5.7% today to a weeks’ worth of gains – but it’s still down just under 1.0% for the month.

Big news from Core Lithium (ASX:CXO), which has added a relatively middling 5.7% this morning on news that it has more than doubled its Mineral Resource Estimate from 4.37Mt @ 1.53% Li2O1 to 10.1Mt @ 1.48% Li2O2 at BP33, a key deposit for the Finniss Lithium Operation (Finniss) in the Northern Territory. Liontown Resources (ASX:LTR) also climbed, adding around 6.0% for the day.

But it’s BrainChip (ASX:BRN) going gangbusters today, after it soared more than 18% on news of the launch of the company’s second-generation Akida platform, which the company says “drives extremely efficient and intelligent edge devices for the Artificial Intelligence of Things (AIoT) solutions and services market”.

The good people at BrainChip did their very best to explain the next-gen Akida platform as a “hyper-efficient, yet powerful neural processing system, architected for embedded Edge AI applications, now adds efficient 8-bit processing to go with advanced capabilities such as time domain convolutions and vision transformer acceleration, for an unprecedented level of performance in sub-watt devices, taking them from perception towards cognition”.

I’d like to thank BrainChip for that incomprehensible slab of words, and gently suggest that they at least try to word it for people like me, who – if we were any dumber – would only require “a nice, sunny spot and watering twice a week” to survive.

ASX SMALL CAP LEADERS

Here are the best performing ASX small cap stocks:

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

Code	Company	Price	%	Volume	Market Cap
RLG	Roolife Group Ltd	0.015	88%	44,246,348	$5,724,465
XST	Xstate Resources	0.0015	50%	1,000,000	$3,215,182
X2M	X2M Connect Limited	0.09	48%	53,058	$8,593,300
LNU	Linius Tech Limited	0.002	33%	1,190,004	$4,759,119
MDX	Mindax Limited	0.08	25%	2,248,481	$127,555,692
ROG	Red Sky Energy.	0.005	25%	515,093	$21,208,909
ASQ	Australian Silica	0.062	24%	2,584	$14,083,019
EX1	Exopharm Limited	0.017	21%	566,908	$2,200,961
AOA	Ausmon Resorces	0.006	20%	331,210	$4,846,447
AXP	AXP Energy Ltd	0.003	20%	2,416,256	$14,561,702
MCT	Metalicity Limited	0.003	20%	2,200,000	$8,761,348
MTH	Mithril Resources	0.003	20%	871,502	$8,157,725
5GG	Pentanet	0.16	19%	228,305	$39,934,446
TIG	Tigers Realm Coal	0.013	18%	362,919	$143,733,726
Z2U	Zoom2Utechnologies	0.085	18%	33,235	$10,079,256
PTX	Prescient Ltd	0.105	18%	2,338,856	$64,593,766
BRN	Brainchip Ltd	0.595	17%	27,430,084	$901,199,654
CMG	Criticalmineralgrp	0.175	17%	44,084	$4,580,336
EPX	Ept Global Limited	0.035	17%	151,143	$11,609,880
AEV	Avenira Limited	0.014	17%	5,622,497	$14,943,241
CXU	Cauldron Energy Ltd	0.007	17%	4,722,758	$5,589,408
SI6	SI6 Metals Limited	0.007	17%	3,549,760	$8,972,368
AKP	Audio Pixels Ltd	9.11	16%	7,563	$228,001,225
GPR	Geopacific Resources	0.022	16%	1,337,387	$9,902,631
LIN	Lindian Resources	0.265	15%	6,755,785	$224,885,218

Leading the ladder today, by a country mile, is Roolife Group (ASX:RLG), up a smashing 112.5% (and counting…) on news that it has secured stocking and distribution for Remedy Drinks into Alibaba’s 300 high-tech Freshippo supermarkets and stores in China.

RLG said Freshippo has converged online and offline activities by using retail stores not just to sell to consumers, but also fulfil online orders, in addition to offering an immersive and fun experience to customers who shop in-store.

Australian brand Remedy Drinks are makers of no-sugar, low calorie, live cultured, organic drinks including Kombucha, which Freshippo will sell online through its official app and also offline through its over 300 brick-and-mortar stores located in 27 cities across China.

Meanwhile, Mindax (ASX:MDX) is back in action on the ASX, after a very lengthy period of time wandering the wilderness in self-imposed exile while trying to sort through a few issues and just, you know, get its head together, man.

Mindax went dark in February 2022, and has been quietly beavering away at its Mt Forest iron project, after some protracted back’n’forth with JV partner Norton Gold Fields which needed to be cleared up before MDX could trade again.

It all appears to have been concluded in a manner deemed pleasing to the ASX, MDX went live again and shot up 25% today – so it was probably worth the wait.

There’s a big bunch of penny stocks swinging about wildly on little-to-no volume, because that’s what they tend to do if no one’s around to keep an eye on them, including X2M Connect (ASX:X2M) on +27.9% and Exopharm (ASX:EX1), up 21.4%.

ASX SMALL CAP LAGGARDS

Here are the least best performing ASX small cap stocks:

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

Code	Company	Price	%	Volume	Market Cap
SIH	Sihayo Gold Limited	0.001	-50%	1,445,000	$12,204,256
MBX	Myfoodieboxlimited	0.02	-44%	418,939	$1,329,056
RHY	Rhythm Biosciences	0.585	-39%	4,345,281	$208,480,885
AQX	Alice Queen Ltd	0.001	-33%	403,272	$3,795,431
CCE	Carnegie Cln Energy	0.0015	-25%	353,981	$31,285,147
RBR	RBR Group Ltd	0.003	-25%	1,481,897	$5,626,952
MRI	Myrewardsinternation	0.023	-23%	35,819	$6,134,461
IOU	Ioupay Limited	0.038	-22%	27,410,358	$28,041,499
AIV	Activex Limited	0.024	-20%	124,850	$6,481,577
AUK	Aumake Limited	0.004	-20%	96,389	$4,372,235
MTL	Mantle Minerals Ltd	0.002	-20%	1,600,000	$13,364,013
ICG	Inca Minerals Ltd	0.023	-18%	4,984,885	$13,519,894
CLU	Cluey Ltd	0.185	-18%	13,190	$31,113,052
HMY	Harmoney Corp Ltd	0.46	-17%	64,461	$56,363,351
AMD	Arrow Minerals	0.005	-17%	28,911	$17,449,863
CLZ	Classic Min Ltd	0.0025	-17%	2,996,976	$3,777,791
PNX	PNX Metals Limited	0.0025	-17%	5,223,087	$16,141,874
M2R	Miramar	0.052	-16%	23,477	$4,382,268
DTR	Dateline Resources	0.021	-16%	5,137,722	$14,129,613
SSH	Sshgroupltd	0.16	-16%	44,306	$8,209,160
GIB	Gibb River Diamonds	0.055	-15%	30,076	$13,748,114
HCD	Hydrocarbon Dynamic	0.011	-15%	800,000	$7,631,787
NME	Nex Metals Explorat	0.017	-15%	13,043	$5,576,380
ASW	Advanced Share Ltd	0.145	-15%	17,040	$32,879,322
WEC	White Energy Company	0.145	-15%	19,668	$6,896,779

It’s not been a great day for Rhythm Biosciences (ASX:RHY), which has plummeted 38% after announcing that it has withdrawn its submission to the TGA for its ColoSTAT bowel cancer screening tech.

Rhythm says that the TGA came back to the company with what sounds like a lot of questions and issues that needed to be addressed within the submission, and gave them a 20-day deadline to sort it all out.

However, the Rhythm says it’ll need more time, so it has withdrawn the application for now and will submit a new application “some time in this calendar year” – possibly because the submission is more than 1,300 pages long.

ColoSTAT bowel cancer screening remains approved for use in New Zealand, where it was given access to the market by the local TGA (Medsafe) in November last year.

LAST ORDERS

Bravura Solutions (ASX:BVS) has launched a fully underwritten A$23m institutional placement and A$57m pro‐rata accelerated non‐renounceable entitlement offer.

The total $80m equity raising will see approximately 200m new shares issue, representing approximately 81% of the current issued capital of Bravura, with the money going to help fund negative cashflow and transaction costs, and provide balance sheet flexibility and working capital, and fund its Operational Change Program, which is very brave.

Bravura says that the cap raise will be sold at $0.40 a pop, representing a 52.9% discount to the last closing price of A$0.85.

Additionally, the company says that it has amended its debt facility, with the $11m limit (including $1.3m in bank guarantees) fully drawn with securities to be granted, tenor reduced to 6 months, a covenant waiver received and a minimum liquidity threshold of $25m.

The announcement comes on the heels of Bravura revealing that things are Not Great there at the moment, with its 1H23 results showing a steep decline in revenue, and earnings guidance pointing in the wrong direction, to the tune of a loss of between $19m and $24m on the cards.