It’s the middle of the week, and that means it’s time to take a Wednesday arvo ultra-nap, and get ourselves fresh and ready for a sprint run to Saturday morning, where the sun shines just that little bit brighter and the insistent beeping of your morning alarms can be ignored for an extra 3-4 minutes, if you’re lucky.

There’s plenty of stuff been happening around the place, so it’s odds-on you’ve missed at least something from this incredibly well-constructed list of market and world news ephemera.

So sit back, breathe easy and let Kermit get his Hump Day on, while we fill you in on the things you probably didn’t see because of how monumentally important and busy you are.

 

FROM THE HEADLINES

In hugely unexpected news, former US President Donald Trump has tossed his gross red cap in the ring, announcing that he’s going to run for president again in 2024. God have mercy on us all.

The announcement comes on the heels of almost every single candidate Trump endorsed in the US midterm elections being thrown to the wolves by voters, and the rest of the Republican Party wishing Trump would simply retire into his den to sulk forever at El Pollo del Mar or whatever his Florida home is called.

It could be a long, loooong two years for Trump, who faces losing his greatest ally in the media after magnate Rupert Murdoch reportedly told the former president that the well of news media support has run dry.

As if this front page in the New York Times perhaps wasn’t already a clue:

 

 

In entertainment market news, Taylor Swift tickets are trading 4995% higher this afternoon, after Ticketmaster’s website Nugged in its Huggies, under the sheer volume of Swifties trying to buy tickets to the singer’s 2023 “Eras” tour.

Hundreds of thousands of angsty teenage girls are reportedly even angstier after spending up to eight hours waiting in an online queue for tickets, only to find out that there were no more tickets to be had.

They have already started showing up for sale (the tickets, not the teenagers) on re-sale sites like Stubhub, some listed with prices up to $22,700, which – unless Ms Swift is going to smile beatifically and guarantee every single person in attendance is admitted directly to heaven at the end of each performance – seems a bit steep.

And from the Economics desk comes a frank assessment of how Australia’s travelling from the International Monetary Fund, which has warned that we need Be Better if we want to avoid a recession.

The IMF says we need ​​higher interest rates, ongoing fiscal discipline and major tax reform, which is – and this is a super-weird coincidence – precisely what my Uber driver was shouting at me the whole way home from the city in the wee hours of this morning.

 

WHAT YOU MIGHT’VE MISSED

Volt Power Group (ASX:VPR) has managed to secure the remaining 30% interest in EcoQuip Australia Pty Ltd (EcoQuip) from EcoQuip founder, Mr Dave Sharp and his family interests, giving VPR 100% ownership of its subsidiary.

The details of the deal are pretty straightforward – Volt dropped a cool cash payment of $162,000, and 1.37 billion (with a “B”) new fully paid ordinary shares in Voltrepresenting a 12.8% shareholding in the post-transaction value of the company.

Meanwhile, Athena Resources (ASX:AHN) has unveiled DTR assay results from infill drilling at its Byro Magnetite project, which look like this:

  • HRC0111D 103.6m @ 70.9%Fe from 91.3m
  • AHRC0112D 59.6m @ 71.3%Fe from 152.4m
  • AHRC0113D 39.2m @ 70.5%Fe from 166.0m
  • AHRC0114D 79.0m @ 70.8%Fe from 105.0m
  • AHRC0115D 124.27m @ 70.6%Fe from 62.0m

The results also show FE Concentrate grades of up to 71.5 Fe%, magnetite in concentrate of up to 98.8%, (Fe3O4) and DTR Weight recoveries of up to 57.7%.

And the land grab in the Gascyone region continues a-pace – this time it’s Odessa Minerals (ASX:ODE) reporting that it’s snapped up a solid 2,148km2 slice of the REE prospectors’ pie, taking its total search area to more than 3,000km2.

ODE says the new area is “approximately 90% covered by colluvium gravels and cover sediments and, as such, has received minimal previous exploration”.

 

TRADING HALTS

Noronex (ASX:NRX) – How do you do, sir? (Cap Raise).

Tesoro Gold (ASX:TSO) – Very well! And you, sir? (Cap Raise).

Wiseway Group (ASX:WWG) – WWG wants to tell us all about a strategic acquisition of the same nature as the current business.

OZ Minerals (ASX:OZL) – And OZ Minerals has called a halt to proceedings ahead of info about a “potential change of control transaction”. Juicy stuff.

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