Rise and Shine: Everything you need to know before the ASX opens

Good morning everyone, and welcome to 06 June, 2024 – an important day in the history of medicine, and a terrible day to be someone called Alexis St Martin.

Because it was on this day in 1822 that Alexis St Martin was accidentally shot in the stomach at close range with a shotgun, with predictable results. Mostly.

St Martin was treated by Dr William Beaumont, who was so firm in his self-belief that he 100% expected that the wound in St Martin’s gut would be fatal.

However, it was not – but, such was the level of care Beaumont provided, the wound never quite healed, leaving St Martin with a fistula, otherwise known as a bloody great hole.

But where St Martin and everybody else saw a gaping hole in the man’s stomach, Beaumont saw opportunity – so he hired St Martin as a “handyman” and set about performing all manner of weird experiments on him, in order to learn as much as he could about the human gastric system by watching it at work right in front of his eyes.

Mostly, Beaumont tied bits of various food to pieces of string, poked them into St Martin’s stomach, and then pulled them out again to see what the digestive juices had done to them.

This, obviously, was unpleasant for St Martin, who reacted by running away to Canada. However, the always-completely-normal and pleasant Dr Beaumont had him tracked down, arrested and brought back for more experiments.

For 13 years.

Eventually, Beaumont decided to move from the US back to his homeland in Canada, where he spent the next 20 years periodically writing letters to St Martin, asking him to move to Canada so that he could start shoving things into his body through the hole in his stomach again.

St Martin politely declined, and the letters eventually stopped coming in 1853, when Beaumont died. Freed from his medical tormentor, St Martin lived until 1880.

Luckily for you, you won’t need to offer yourself up for medical experiments in order to get the news you need to start your day off right.

Because Eddy Sunarto’s got a wonderful piece on how inverse ETFs can help you not lose tons and tons of money, and I’ve put together lots of fiddly little things below, so you don’t need to go ferreting all over the internet for your ASX info this morning.

COMMODITY/FOREX/CRYPTO MARKET PRICES

Gold: US$2,333.91 (+0.25%)

Silver: US$29.61 (+0.40%)

Nickel (3mth): US$18,887/t (-2.21%)

Copper (3mth): US$9,793/t (-0.66%)

Zinc: US$2,868.65/t (-2.04%)

Oil (WTI): US$73.43 (+0.26%)

Oil (Brent): US$77.65 (+0.22%)

Iron 62pc Fe: US$107.69/t (-2.24%)

AUD/USD: 0.6643 (-0.04%)

Bitcoin: US$70,892.80 (+0.50%)

WHAT GOT YOU TALKING

New research out of the US and Australia suggests that coal mines could be (secretly) hosting harvestable critical minerals, I wrote yesterday, like a proper big boy journalist.

Researchers in the US find there are critical Rare Earth Elements (#REEs) lurking in #coal mines, writes Gregor Stronach. https://t.co/7jjIlFtYBA

— Stockhead (@StockheadAU) June 4, 2024

YESTERDAY’S ASX SMALL CAP LEADERS

Here are the best performing ASX small cap stocks:

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

Code	Name	Price	% Change	Volume	Market Cap
CCO	The Calmer Co Int	0.012	118%	64,724,025	$7,594,241
MRQ	Mrg Metals Limited	0.0015	50%	515,210	$2,525,119
NRZ	Neurizer Ltd	0.006	50%	9,512,579	$7,609,723
ADG	Adelong Gold Limited	0.0055	38%	52,395,989	$4,471,956
GML	Gateway Mining	0.032	33%	7,196,629	$8,291,026
BEL	Bentley Capital Ltd	0.029	26%	53,206	$1,750,942
PNX	PNX Metals Limited	0.005	25%	539,326	$23,880,859
REM	Remsensetechnologies	0.022	22%	8,471	$2,967,474
VN8	Vonex Limited.	0.022	22%	365,408	$6,512,915
SRJ	SRJ Technologies	0.067	22%	30,644	$8,761,194
ICL	Iceni Gold	0.087	21%	4,727,268	$19,638,796
AYT	Austin Metals Ltd	0.006	20%	100,000	$6,620,957
DTM	Dart Mining NL	0.024	20%	1,470,454	$5,168,657
FGH	Foresta Group	0.012	20%	2,613,320	$23,553,791
JAT	Jatcorp Limited	0.67	20%	370,123	$46,629,194
MGA	Metalsgrovemining	0.08	19%	1,452,310	$6,024,004
LPM	Lithium Plus	0.125	19%	1,789,498	$13,895,700
XPN	Xpon Technologies	0.013	18%	450,000	$3,766,856
CTN	Catalina Resources	0.0035	17%	273,869	$3,715,461
VAR	Variscan Mines Ltd	0.007	17%	106,530	$2,274,002
EXP	Experience Co Ltd	0.15	15%	261,777	$98,469,460
OLL	Openlearning	0.015	15%	123,196	$3,482,298
AN1	Anagenics Limited	0.008	14%	70,000	$3,229,243
G6M	Group 6 Metals Ltd	0.032	14%	4,625,484	$28,112,640
GTI	Gratifii	0.008	14%	675,000	$11,284,315

The Calmer Co (ASX:CCO) was well above 100% after news retail sales of its kava-based relaxation beverage have risen dramatically.

Surely can’t be the same flava of Kava that this intrepid reporter once had, which is good news for everyone.

CCO says it’s pulling in some $16,000 a day in e-commerce sales for the month of May, an increase of 45%.

Total sales were reported to be up 28% and will exceed $610,000 in May, against April’s total of $470,000.

Group 6 Metals (ASX:G6M) also did well on Wednesday, climbing after the company released an update on how things are going at its wholly owned Dolphin tungsten mine on King Island, Tasmania.

Group 6 says the open pit has exceeded forecast volumes for ore tonnes and metric tonne units (mtu) of WO3 recovered up until the end of April, despite the operation falling behind schedule.

RemSense Technologies (ASX:REM) has jumped after adding some ballast to the board.

The company said in an update, there’d been some terrific cost-cutting delivering an operating cost savings of approximately $1 million over prior years.

And clinical stage biotech PharmAust (ASX:PAA) jumped by almost +20% this morning after sharing some exciting updates about its ongoing research into Motor Neurone Disease (MND), also called Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS).

PAA announced that enrollment for the Open-Label Extension (OLE) study has now been completed.

This study looks at the long-term safety, tolerability, and effectiveness of PAA’s lead drug, monepantel (MPL), for people with MND/ALS.

PAA says that new and updated data provided by Berry Consultants reveals some promising news — patients who took MPL had a 91% lower risk of death from MND/ALS compared to ‘untreated matched-controls’.

This is significant and suggests that MPL could be a really effective treatment for MND/ALS.

YESTERDAY’S ASX SMALL CAP LAGGARDS

Here are the worst performing ASX small cap stocks:

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

Code	Name	Price	% Change	Volume	Market Cap
EDE	Eden Inv Ltd	0.002	-33%	799,204	$11,034,813
AVE	Avecho Biotech Ltd	0.003	-25%	22,816	$12,677,188
AXP	AXP Energy Ltd	0.0015	-25%	130,848	$11,649,361
ECT	Env Clean Tech Ltd.	0.003	-25%	29,082	$12,687,242
EEL	Enrg Elements Ltd	0.003	-25%	21,287,350	$4,039,860
LNU	Linius Tech Limited	0.0015	-25%	21,035	$11,093,481
RIL	Redivium Limited	0.003	-25%	11,607	$10,923,419
TMK	TMK Energy Limited	0.003	-25%	483,406	$27,646,448
TMX	Terrain Minerals	0.003	-25%	50,000	$5,726,683
VBS	Vectus Biosystems	0.089	-23%	417,866	$6,119,210
EV1	Evolutionenergy	0.04	-22%	535,552	$13,322,074
BMM	Balkanminingandmin	0.052	-21%	125,266	$4,688,674
IMI	Infinitymining	0.028	-20%	59,374	$4,156,369
ADD	Adavale Resource Ltd	0.004	-20%	960,000	$5,201,327
ATH	Alterity Therap Ltd	0.004	-20%	74,400	$26,225,577
BLZ	Blaze Minerals Ltd	0.004	-20%	1,324,400	$3,142,791
ENT	Enterprise Metals	0.004	-20%	882,110	$4,423,605
ICU	Investor Centre Ltd	0.004	-20%	852,306	$1,522,557
MOM	Moab Minerals Ltd	0.004	-20%	270,002	$3,559,815
PUR	Pursuit Minerals	0.004	-20%	837,809	$14,719,857
ROG	Red Sky Energy.	0.004	-20%	244,719	$27,111,136
SIH	Sihayo Gold Limited	0.002	-20%	947,919	$30,510,640
YPB	YPB Group Ltd	0.002	-20%	19,786	$2,019,904
CND	Condor Energy Ltd	0.036	-18%	12,706,241	$25,432,015
PLC	Premier1 Lithium Ltd	0.024	-17%	54,426	$5,062,649