CLOSING BELL: Turns out tying an albatross round your neck is easier than a bow tie. Who knew?

• The crowd went wild after Wall Street dropped an absolute banger overnight
• OD6 is probably the only OD anyone’s ever smiled about
• Musk emails Twitter employees to basically say everything’s terrible

What a day, what a day – a Friday worth trudging all the way through the week to have, and set the mood for a weekend of smiling about how rock-solid the ASX can be, when it decides to knuckle down and actually try, instead of staring out the window and daydreaming about making it big as a rock star.

When the doors opened this morning, the benchmark went bang! – a 2.7% spirit-lifter that was so lovely and deep and pleasantly warm that the needle barely moved from there all day.

As the bell rings to tell us that school’s out for the day, that’s where we’re at – let’s call it 2.8%, shake hands and part friends.

Happy Days.

And it’s (mostly) all thanks to economic data from the US that pointed to that country’s epic inflation woes finally cresting at a still-horrifying peak – numbers that basically gave investors the green light to get their greed on and start spending like there’s no tomorrow.

It’ll be interesting to watch how Wall Street performs in tonight’s session, though – the US midterms are still on a knife’s edge, with Republicans edging towards taking the House and the Senate races so close you’d be hard-pressed to get an illegal ballot paper between them.

As it stands, it’s the Senate race that’s the one to watch, with the scoreboard showing Dems 48 – Republicans 49, and the magic 51 to control the chamber achingly close but still so distant for both sides.

In the event of a 50-50 tied result, it’s still going to be a Democrat win – because whoever it was that decided to have an even number of Senate seats clearly didn’t think things through at all – but the deciding vote on every bill split down party lines would fall to Vice President Harris, who you’d expect to back her own party at least most of the time.

BIG BUSINESS NEWS

The entire business community has been glued to their monitors this week to follow what’s happening among the big tech companies, which have taken poundings so bad, Mel Gibson’s reportedly considering casting them as The Messiah in The Passion of the Christ 2: The Christening.

(Tagline: Only an Act of God Can Save Them Now. In cinemas December 26.)

The latest trends among the household names in tech have been a) shedding more value than a burning barn, and b) shedding staff like they’re a liability, not an asset.

Proof: Meta dumped 11,000 people the other day – an insane number of highly-skilled people to dump into the employment market at a time when the economy is inflating faster than Russell “I’m focussing on working behind the camera now” Crowe, but it happened.

That’s, like, more than the entire workforce at Twitter – and that’s using Twitter’s numbers from before new Celebrity CEO Elon Musk fired nearly everyone and then begged some of them to come back.

Today, though, the six or seven people left at Twitter got an email from the Big Boss. Usually, when a new CEO drops an all-staffer to the troops, it’s a whole heaping helping of glad-handing “great to be here” bull-patties.

Twitter’s email: You can’t work from home at all any more, starting tomorrow! Oh, and it’s seriously possible that this whole things gonna go broke.

If you had money tied up in Musk’s folly, you’d be frantically searching for a building industry buyer for all the bricks you’ve been shitting since the whole thing began – but fret not, for Elon has another plan: Turn part of Twitter into OnlyFans and let paid users sell access to videos of their goolies.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the correct and proper way to tie an albatross around your neck.

NOT QUITE SO LOCAL MARKETS

A quick look at Asian markets has shown that the Feel Good Friday vibe was, indeed, highly contagious, spreading through our regional neighbours like a bout of gastro through a nursing home.

At the time of writing, Japan’s Nikkei was up 2.92%, Shanghai was lagging behind on a steady 1.51% and Hong Kong had blown the roof off the stadium, stacking on 5.48%. Nice, nice and very nice indeed.

ASX SMALL CAP LEADERS

Here are the best performing ASX small cap stocks:

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

The landscape on local markets has shifted a little since lunchtime, but the thrust of the day remains the same – every sector kicked arse except Utilities.

Our Small Cappers delivered some spectacular wins as well, with this week’s barnstormer OD6 Metals continuing to climb for most of the day, topping out around the +50% mark before easing to finish +26% for the day.

Venture Metals has also done well today on the back of news that it’s hit multiple surface samples with more than 1% total rare earth oxides (TREO) and topping up at 12.5% TREO with 5,460 parts per million (0.546%) and 14,575ppm (1.457%) of the valuable magnet REEs praseodymium oxide and neodymium oxide respectively.

The result “effectively doubles the company’s exposure to the rare earth space”, VMS managing director Andrew Radonjic said, no doubt smiling very broadly while he did so.

Top of the charts at Closing Time, though, was late bolter Prospech (ASX:PRS), hoisted skyward by a short sharp +50% blast up its skirts on teeny tiny volume. These things happen.

The GO2 People (ASX:GO2) climbed out of a recent funk today, up more than 27% on news that it’s sat down with the ATO to figure out a payment plan, after the company made a “show of good faith” lump sum payment of $250,000 against the Superannuation Guarantee liabilities of The GO2 Recruitment Trust earlier this month.

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:

And just to help those keeping score at home keep their stats up to date, here’s who didn’t win today.

LAST ORDERS

A quick one from the world of ETFs, where Vanguard – the company who brought you such hits as the Vanguard Australian Property Securities Index Fund, and the unforgettable Vanguard All-World ex-US Shares Index ETF, has revealed a new product to its line-up of offerings.

It’s called Vanguard Super SaveSmart, and includes a MySuper default fund called Lifecycle, as well as a range of index-based diversified and single sector investment options as part of the choice menu.

Vanguard Australia Managing Director, Daniel Shrimski says that the new Super offering has been brought to market because “saving for retirement shouldn’t be complex”. Amen to that, brother – unless you love complicated things, in which case you should look me up on Twitter.

That’s right ladies, I’m single.

TRADING HALTS

Winsome Resources (ASX:WR1) – After hitting the jackpot last week, WR1 is holding a capital raise.

Volt Resources (ASX:VRC) – Volt is charging up for a capital raise of its own.

Lycaon Resources (ASX:LYN) – Lycaon’s on hold ahead of a proposed acquisition.

Castillo Copper (ASX:CCZ) – A two-banger from Castillo, taking a nap due to a price query from the ASX, and impending geological results from Broken Hill, which definitely won’t say “Hill remains broken. Plz advise”.

New Zealand King Salmon Investments (ASX:NZK) – Announcement pending on the Marlborough District Council’s Blue Endeavor decision – not at all similar to Amazon’s Blue Origin decision so we’re unlikely to see live salmon in space any time soon.

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And that’s it from us for another hectic week on the ASX. Don’t forget to tune in next week, to find out who’s still in the running for Massive Gain of the Year 2023. Play safe, have a grouse weekend, etc etc, we’re out.