Hump Day! Who doesn’t love a crazy old Hump Day? Because this one seems to have been a bit manic for a number of people – which means that there’s likely to have been a few tidbits and stories that you missed.

So, pull up a milk crate in the glow of our dumpster fire, get comfy and relax as we bring the best of the rest of the news from today.

 

FROM THE SOCIALS

A lot of people had a lot of stuff to say about crypto’s FTX craptacular implosion – it turns out that many, many people have lost many, many invisible moneycoin things that had no intrinsic value, but still cost a lot of money.

For scalpel-sharp commentary, let’s turn to Twitter user Chris Bakke, who is mourning the real victims here.

 

 

#Skewered.

 

FROM THE HEADLINES

I was hoping to bring news from the ongoing custard pie fight of the US midterm elections, but at the moment it is utter chaos, with the all-important fight for control of the US Senate too close to call.

Instead, we’ll quickly circle back to our story of the rando who won so much money on the Powerball overnight that they are probably dead of a heart attack, clutching the winning ticket in a cruel, cold dead man’s grip.

The size of the jackpot had just about everyone looking for ways to win, including perennial Twitter favourite @CramerTracker, whose diligent watch over CNBC Investing Club host Jim Cramer means that the rest of us don’t have to sit and be yelled at by a gaunt chameleon dressed in a suit made of human skin about stocks and stuff.

The “inverse Cramer” thing isn’t new – Jim Cramer is frequently and hilariously wrong with his ‘absolute lock’ stock picks – but this pre-Powerball twist on the wonderful trope was just glorious.

 

 

And in news that has nothing to do with markets or politics but is still completely and utterly baffling, comes these two quick bites:

From Wisconsin, the spiritual home of cheese and drink driving, comes news that a nurse has amputated a patient’s foot without consent, so that she could display it at a taxidermy shop run by her parents.

The 68-year-old patient was, naturally, hopping mad. #ISaidWhatISaid.

And from Florida, the spiritual home of gross stupidity, comes a report of a man who – two seconds, I need to check this is real…

Wow. Okay, so – Florida man wanted to take a handgun onto a commercial flight, which is obviously a massive no-no. To disguise the weapon, the man purchased a raw chicken, stuffed the firearm inside the bird and attempted to carry that onto the aircraft.

Because bringing a dead chicken onto a plane is clearly totally normal behaviour and is 100% guaranteed not to raise suspicions at all.

And with that all out of our systems, let’s see what you might have missed on the markets today.

 

LAST ORDERS

Who knew that a Wednesday could be quite so chaotic? Good news is, though, that local markets appear to have bumbled along happily regardless, and a lot of people just kept doing business stuff, and kept on telling us all about it.

For instance, did you know that Tamboran (ASX:TBN) has completed a deal with Origin Energy (ASX:ORG), finalising the purchase of Origin’s Beetaloo basin assets, encompassing EPs 98, 117, and 76?

Well, you do now. The deal is done, and it seems everyone involved is pretty happy about it, no doubt for their own special reasons.

The interesting news for Tamboran is that not only has the company snapped up Origin’s piece of the puzzle, leaving TBN holding the largest consolidated position in the deepest section of the Beetaloo Basin, which makes everyone at TBN very, very brave, because the deep bits are where all the monsters live. Everyone knows that…

Victory Offices (ASX:VOL), meanwhile, is definitely not celebrating today. It has been suspended from trading after the company went into voluntary administration.

The suspension caps a truly horrifying few days for Victory founder Dan Baxter, whose literal hole in the ground where a home should be in Melbourne’s super-swanky suburb of Toorak was unloaded by administrators for a song – 16% less than its last purchase price in 2018, and close to a 20% kick in the pants below the $15 million belt for Baxter.

The site is a for-real pile of rubble in a crater, as it was halfway through being demolished to make way for a new 5-bedder luxury Baxter Pad, before the wheels came off the office chairs completely and both the money and the music stopped.

And lastly, there’s another Victorian in the news, this time for a positive reason: Genetic Technologies (ASX:GTG) has sporting a major feather in its cap following publication of a validation study evaluating the performance of its geneType ovarian cancer test.

The 10 year prospective cohort study utilised data from more than 190,000 women, producing a paper titled “A combined clinical and genetic model for predicting risk of ovarian cancer” that appeared in the highly prestigious European Journal of Cancer Prevention.

The paper’s highlights include:

  • GeneType Ovarian Cancer Risk Assessment Test significantly improves the identification of 10 year and lifetime risk in the general population of women who would normally be considered ‘average risk’.
  • Genetype for Ovarian Cancer is able to identify the top 20% of women who are:
    • at over 40% increased 10‐year risk and;
    • over 50% increased full‐lifetime compared to the general population.
  • GeneType for Ovarian Cancer is similarly able to identify women who are at very low risk
  • Study references 10 year prospective cohort study utilising data from approximately 190,000 women aged between 40 and 69 from the UK Biobank.
  • Identification of high‐risk women enables introduction of traditional and novel screening options and / or risk‐reducing strategies to drive a significant improvement in patient outcomes.

It’s a big deal for any BioTech to be included in a highly-regarded journal, especially with results to illustrate the success from the hard work being carried out by its research team.

 

TRADING HALTS

3iQ CoinShares Bitcoin Feeder ETF – In a halt pending an announcement of some sort.

3iQ CoinShares Ether Feeder ETF – Samesies!

Jervois Global (ASX:JRV) – Equity raising.

Accelerate Resources (ASX:AX8) – Capital raising.

Elixir Energy (ASX:EXR) – Elixir’s got an announcement in connection with the contingent resource booking for its 100% owned Queensland asset ATP 2044.

iTech Minerals (ASX:ITM) – Capital raising.

West Cobar Metals (ASX:WC1) – Capital raising.

Structural Monitoring Systems (ASX:SMN) – Interesting news for SMN regarding a purchase order from a commercial airline.

 

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