In the spirit of it being Thursday – a day traditionally reserved for planning a sickie for Friday and heading out to go late-night shopping in the states and territories where truly civilised people exist – there’s a lot of talk about these folks buying those folks, but not until some other folks are sure they’re not going to be left holding the baby while being forced to drink the bathwater.

So now’s probably as good a time as any for everyone (yep – that means you, too…) to throw off the shackles of our oppressive corporate overlords, rise up and seize the means of production. #MeatTheRich. #OccupyWalmart

Or, because that sounds a bit difficult and could take ages if not handled properly from the start of proceedings, it might be time to just hunker down somewhere soft and comfy, and let us fill your tender pink sea-shell ears with information you may have missed because you’re being worked too hard.

 

FROM THE SOCIALS

 


Elon Musk — apologising for the future mistakes he’s already made, while making 100% sure that the people he fired recently feel even more shit about themselves. #Hashtag.

 

FROM THE HEADLINES

A quick summary of what’s got the world all a-flutter at the moment: the US midterm elections. The battle for control of the US Senate is likely to go right down to the wire – and then well beyond it, after the key Senate position for Georgia is set to go to a run-off election on 06 December.

That happens when two candidates get close to a win but neither has an outright majority of the vote – so basically everyone who voted gets another whack at the cherry, and anyone who voted for a total wombat that didn’t land in a Top-2 spot has to pick again.

It’s 100% not ideal for the political stability of the United States, but – frankly – nothing seemingly is at the moment.

In Business News, Amazon has hit a truly unfortunate “world-first” milestone, becoming the only publicly-traded company in the history of the universe (that we know of) to lose US$1 trillion in market cap.

The company flubbed another 4.6% of its trading price overnight, dropping to $879 billion from its July 2021 high water mark of $1.88 trillion – a staggering fall from grace that we’re sure might be blamed at least partially on naked hubris… but it’s hard to tell because former CEO Jeff Bezos was unavailable for comment as he is currently sailing his megayacht into “space” or something.

Amazon executives should still be pretty happy with themselves, however, as they’ve hit their key metric for the quarter by managing to provide same-day delivery for what is clearly an enormous multi-package consignment of terrible decision-making.

And from the World of Science, the headline “IceCube detects high-energy neutrinos from an active galactic nucleus” caught our eye this afternoon, prompting fears that the infamous rapper-turned-movie star had turned his back on show business forever.

Turns out that the IceCube in question is a neutrino-observing colossal block of actual ice, located beneath the South Pole, so that bastard Santa can’t steal it and ruin particle physics for everyone.

 

FROM THE MARKETS

There’s been a lot of work today for the Mergers and Acquisitions department – the big news obviously being the “Like srsly yu guyz we want to buy you” $9 doorbuster offer for Origin Energy (ASX:ORG) from Brookfield Asset Management & Friends which put an $18.4 billion price on Origin’s head.

But nestled in among the day’s announcement was a gem dropped by Warrego Energy (ASX:WGO) stating that it’s had a letter in the mail from Strike Energy (ASX:STX) containing a confidential, non-binding indicative all-scrip merger proposal.

There are, naturally, some conditions – but the deal would see Warrego Shareholders receive 0.7521 new Strike shares for each Warrego share held, in addition to the net proceeds resulting from the sale of Warrego’s Spanish assets, plus Warrego would get to pick someone to join the board of the merged companies.

Half an hour after Warrego dropped its news, Strike confirmed it was all true, adding that the initial proposal had been sent over back in September, but that the latest iteration of the proposal includes better terms for existing WGO shareholders.

And lastly, the Kedalion Nickel takeover of Cannon Resources (ASX:CNR) is set to get a vote of ACCEPT! from the Cannon bigwigs – but there’s some mopping up to do beforehand.

Rox Resources (ASX:RXL) has indicated that while it thinks it’s all a grand idea, the company holds some 8,553,130 Cannon shares equal to approximately 10% of all Cannon shares on issue, which are subject to ASX imposed escrow restrictions until 12 August 2023.

ROX says it’s all cool-cool about the takeover provided ASX Listing Rule 9.5 is satisfied and it’s in a position to accept the offer, and – of course – there isn’t a better offer dropped on the table in the meantime, capable of trumping the $0.45 per share bid from Kedalion.

 

TRADING HALTS

Resolute Mining (ASX:RSG) – Capital raise.

Riversgold (ASX:RGL) – Capital raise.

Dundas Minerals (ASX:DUN) – Capital raise.

SECOS Group (ASX:SES) – SES has an announcement in the wings about expansion into a large Australian retailer.

Avenira (ASX:AEV) – Avenira has put things on hold for a moment while it prepares a clarification around its release early this morning.

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