CLOSING BELL: ‘We may have gone too far’ says RBA boss poised to push things even further

ASX 200 falls again to – impressively – end the week with both a whimper and a bang
RBA chief tells parliament he knows we’re in pain, but that’s not important
Megado (ASX:MEG) buys up a very pricey slab of Quebec’s best lithium land

The ASX fell between breakfast and lunch, before pausing briefly to gather up enough strength to fall even further between lunch and the closing bell, haplessly flailing its way towards -0.85% for the day.

The Utilities sector was the only strong performer, up 1.14% on a day when nearly everything else was drowning in red, like a hobo who’s been handed the keys to the cellar.

InfoTech (-1.95%), Real Estate (-1.71%) and Energy (-1.64%) all copped an oversized hiding today, not all that far ahead of the rest of the pack, it must be said.

Consumer Staples was the only other sector to post a gain for the day – up a whisper-thin 0.2%.

At the top end of town, QBE Insurance (ASX:QBE) has posted a happier-than-FY21 set of results for FY22 to climb 7.8%, while A2 Milk (ASX:A2M) has added 5.6% on news that the Ministry for Primary Industries is set to commence the audit process of Synlait Milk’s Dunsandel facility in NZ, on behalf of China’s State Administration for Market Regulation.

In regional markets, Japan’s Nikkei is down 0.65%, Shanghai’s benchmark is 0.16% lower and the Hang Seng is weakening as their day draws to a close, down 0.58%.

FROM THE HEADLINES

If you’re confused by the miasma of mixed messages from Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe, you’re not alone – because, love him or hate him, the more stuff he said this week, the harder it became to get a straight answer out of him.

Appearing before parliament today, Lowe said that the RBA’s decision to cane Australia on the arse with the interest rates stick nine times in a row is unlikely to be the end of the punishing schedule of rate hikes.

And that’s despite his acknowledgement that he’s aware that mortgage holders are already complaining of skinned knees and chapped lips from their grovelling scramble to refinance their loans before rates hit triple digits and the whole country has to live under a bridge.

“There is a risk that we’ve gone too far and don’t need to do anymore, that the economy will slow more than we expect,” Lowe told a parliamentary hearing today, before adding: “But there’s also a risk that we haven’t done enough, that inflation proves more persistent and doesn’t come down.”

That’s probably the direct result of the RBA being armed with just the single interest rate lever to yank in its fight against inflation, while the rest of the nation turns to yanking the lever on the RSL pokies in a bid to hit a jackpot big enough that mortgage rates become meaningless.

It should be noted that Labor MP Tania Lawrence did ask Lowe why Australia doesn’t have alternative ways of managing inflation, such as using saving and delayed consumption.

Lowe responded by saying that it wasn’t up to the RBA to push for policies like that, because it “has been given a specific job do to” – by which, I assume, he means “grabbing the nation by the nipples and twisting until we cough every red cent of our lunch money”.

Meanwhile, it’s handbags at 20 paces in WA, after a spat between two of Australia’s richest men boiled over the point that the Federal Communications Minister, Michelle Rowland, has had to be called in to umpire the brawl.

Fortescue (ASX:FMG) boss Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest has accused Kerry “Sticky” Stokes of weaponising his media empire in a bid to further his mining interests, by using The West Australian newspaper to damage FMG’s “green energy mission”.

Meanwhile, The West Australian’s editor Anthony De Ceglie says that the claims from FMG were only levelled after the paper reported on alleged sexual harassment claims at some of the mining group’s sites.

It’s got “long, ugly brawl” written all over it, and I am truly concerned that the nation might run out of popcorn well before it draws to a ponderous close.

WINNERS

Code	Company	Price	%	Volume	Market Cap
MEG	Megado Minerals Ltd	0.058	35%	69,380,108	$5,912,500
CCE	Carnegie Cln Energy	0.002	33%	872,844	$23,463,861
AHQ	Allegiance Coal Ltd	0.014	27%	30,909,352	$11,053,855
RVS	Revasum	0.3	25%	1,149,364	$25,419,997
RMY	RMA Global	0.135	23%	541,273	$61,373,690
LDX	Lumos Diagnostics	0.044	22%	510,797	$7,992,736
XTC	Xantippe Res Ltd	0.006	20%	2,222,665	$52,900,498
ERG	Eneco Refresh Ltd	0.019	19%	100,000	$4,357,734
CL8	Carly Holdings Ltd	0.02	18%	373,961	$3,474,297
KNB	Koonenberrygold	0.07	17%	45,000	$4,545,387
JPR	Jupiter Energy	0.038	15%	959,940	$40,585,054
CBH	Coolabah Metals Limi	0.155	15%	557,769	$5,062,500
BCK	Brockman Mining Ltd	0.025	14%	14,997	$204,165,107
AII	Almontyindustriesinc	0.895	13%	38,274	$15,951,744
AER	Aeeris Ltd	0.13	13%	100,000	$8,232,144
AW1	Americanwestmetals	0.053	13%	1,790,313	$7,247,795
AUK	Aumake Limited	0.0045	13%	9,412,777	$3,497,788
MOB	Mobilicom Ltd	0.009	13%	10,555	$10,650,237
MOZ	Mosaic Brands Ltd	0.285	12%	205,951	$45,277,143
RBX	Resource B	0.15	11%	329,795	$7,704,427
AVM	Advance Metals Ltd	0.01	11%	443,909	$5,220,397
IS3	I Synergy Group Ltd	0.02	11%	350,000	$5,203,447
MOM	Moab Minerals Ltd	0.01	11%	3,244,118	$6,137,671
GBZ	GBM Rsources Ltd	0.041	11%	287,031	$20,822,326
ADY	Admiralty Resources.	0.011	10%	500,000	$13,035,792

Taking out top spot in Small Caps today was Megado Minerals (ASX:MEG), after the company came bolting out of a trading halt, frantically waving the still-warm receipt from its purchase of the large-scale Cyclone Lithium project in James Bay, Quebec.

The Cyclone Project is centred on approximately 130km2 of the Aquilon Greenstone Belt, and has had limited historical exploration for lithium, while also being highly prospective for massive nickel sulphides and orogenic style gold deposits, Megado says.

It’s also right next door to the highly-regarded Patriot Battery Metals’ (ASX:PMT) Corvette project, Winsome Resources’ (ASX:WR1) Adina & Cancet projects and Cosmos Exploration’s (ASX:C1X) Corvette Far East project.

Megado was up close to 80% this morning, but has eased significantly to a still very respectable 46.5% at the end of the day.

Following on from yesterday, Revasum (ASX:RVS) is still climbing, and still has no news to offer any explanation for why it’s doing so.

It had added another 30% this morning, taking its rise to 58% for the week, and more than 130% higher than it was when all the fireworks went off over Sydney Harbour and a few people’s dogs ran away – but, as they most often do, it eased throughout the arvo to finish up 22.9% higher.

And last but not least for this morning, Allegiance Coal (ASX:AHQ) has seen a spike in interest this morning, climbing more than 18% this morning after announcing its decision to pivot back to metallurgical coal production at both its operating mines.

“This is in response to the dramatic fall in thermal coal prices for coal delivered to Europe, and the significant recovery in metallurgical coal prices over the last two months,” the company says.

Unlike the day’s other two top performers, AHQ’s fortunes continued to improve as the shadows lengthened, hitting +27.2% at around about the same time as my head hit my desk for an unscheduled power nap that has blown an enormous hole in my deadline, and quite paradoxically even more tired than I was before.

LOSERS

Code	Company	Price	%	Volume	Market Cap
AQX	Alice Queen Ltd	0.001	-33%	22,530	$3,795,431
MEB	Medibio Limited	0.001	-33%	704,999	$4,980,891
TTB	Total Brain Ltd	0.002	-33%	271,666	$401,163
AYM	Australia United Min	0.003	-25%	559,367	$7,370,310
XST	Xstate Resources	0.0015	-25%	4,128,210	$6,430,363
MRI	Myrewardsinternation	0.03	-21%	1,923,880	$7,770,317
CLZ	Classic Min Ltd	0.004	-20%	9,244,573	$5,756,635
MFB	My Food Bag Grp Ltd	0.29	-19%	37,650	$87,277,509
PYR	Payright Limited	0.048	-19%	245,975	$12,359,239
HCT	Holista CollTech Ltd	0.015	-17%	185,964	$5,018,401
OAU	Ora Gold Limited	0.005	-17%	3,436,053	$5,905,388
SI6	SI6 Metals Limited	0.005	-17%	38,461	$8,972,368
HVM	Happy Valley	0.06	-15%	10,000	$15,089,598
IDX	Integral Diagnostics	2.69	-14%	1,823,552	$731,489,850
S66	Star Combo	0.15	-14%	63,435	$23,639,522
AMT	Allegra Orthopaedics	0.06	-14%	10,000	$7,312,144
INP	Incentiapay Ltd	0.006	-14%	200,000	$8,855,445
PWH	Pwr Holdings Limited	10.52	-14%	1,462,086	$1,228,655,362
GLA	Gladiator Resources	0.02	-13%	350,000	$12,561,908
WC1	Westcobarmetals	0.135	-13%	135,008	$13,389,480
BGE	Bridgesaaslimited	0.048	-13%	97,565	$1,596,981
AWJ	Auric Mining	0.055	-13%	97,260	$8,244,154
AD1	AD1 Holdings Limited	0.007	-13%	400,000	$5,605,850
ADR	Adherium Ltd	0.0035	-13%	52,631	$19,985,753

LAST ORDERS

Creso Pharma (ASX:CPH) has announced that it’s received firm commitments to raise $2m at an issue price of $0.01506 per share, including a subject-to-shareholder-approval $100,000 slab coming straight out of the pocket of Creso CEO and managing director, William Lay.

The company says that the funds will be “used towards sales and marketing initiatives in the US, completion of Halucenex Life Sciences Inc.’s phase II clinical trial to test the efficacy of psilocybin on treatment resistant Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), pending M&A opportunities, product development initiatives, costs of the offer and the repayment of existing debt”.

Approximately 132,859,356 fully paid ordinary shares are set to be issued, after the company’s recent success that saw it report record revenue growth of 44% to $8.95m in FY2022, and considerable reduction in net operating expenditure.

Meanwhile, intergalactic boffins at Kleos Space (ASX:KSS) have revealed that the company’s Vigilance Mission (KSF1) satellites “have now been entered into operations, following achievement of reliably delivering data products against a monthly service level to Government and Commercial customers”.

“Reaching this critical milestone moves the Company into production mode, confirming the Vigilance mission satellites are now in commercial operation, delivering consistent and reliable data from a specific area of interest which is being processed through our proprietary signal processing platform and being sold to our early adopter customers as intelligence products,” Kleos CEO lan Khalili said.

“We now look forward to expanding our product offering through bringing additional already launched satellites online, including the Patrol Mission (KSF2), expected to commence data delivery in the coming months.”

And Venus Metals (ASX:VMC) says that its partner IGO Limited (ASX:IGO) has commenced ground exploration activities today at the Greenbushes East Exploration Li and Ni-Cu-PGE project in WA.

The program, to be carried out by IGO and its lithium JV partner Tianqi Lithium Corporation will include a Geochemical Survey targeting lithium totalling 1350 soil samples – with 500 soil samples to be collected at 100m x 200m spacing and and approximately 850 soil samples to be collected at 160m spacing.

Two lines will be completed across a priority platinum-palladium-nickel-copper (Pt-Pd-Ni-Cu) target that was outlined by previous exploration carried out by VMC and completion of the ground EM survey is expected by mid-March 2023.

The team will also be conducting a ground gravity survey, with around 700 survey stations at 250m spacing across all granted tenements of the project set up to assist with delineating geological structures and higher- & lower-density bedrock, including mafic-ultramafic intrusions & rare metal pegmatites.

TRADING HALTS

Province Resources (ASX:PRL) – Material update in relation to a Binding Term Sheet entered into with Total Eren Australia.

Mandrake Resources (ASX:MAN) – Material transaction in relation to a new project.

Zelira Therapeutics (ASX:ZLD) – Director appointment.

King River Resources (ASX:KRR) – Sale transaction announcement.

Aston Minerals (ASX:ASO) – Announcement regarding a maiden nickel resource.

Tivan (ASX:TVN) – Announcement of an acquisition transaction.

Rimfire Pacific Mining (ASX:RIM) – Capital raising.

Bastion Minerals (ASX:BMO) – Announcement with respect to the option agreement to acquire the lithium royalty and projects portfolio first announced to the ASX on 5 December 2022.