Good morning everyone, and welcome to 6 February, 2024 – an important date on the calendar for the 1933 crew of the USS Ramapo, because it was on that day that they survived getting caught by the largest rogue wave ever recorded.

The US ship was on its way from San Diego to Manila when it was caught up in a monstrous storm, which raged around the vessel for days on end, whipping up swells that were running at an average of around 50 feet.

In the midst of the storm, around three o’clock in the morning, there was a brief moment when the skies cleared and the light of the moon broke through for the first time in days.

The watch officer on the bridge happened to look behind the ship, and saw a wave of immense size barreling towards the rear deck, at an estimate 50 knots – far faster than the Ramapo was moving.

When it struck, the wave lifted the stern of the ship violently towards the crest of the wave, and – having braced himself against its impact – the watch officer was able to observe the size of this beast of a wave.

At one point, the entire length of the Ramapo – almost 500 feet long – was caught near-vertical on the face of the wave, with the ship’s crow’s nest in a directly horizontal line of sight from where he was hanging on for dear life.

From that account, the size of the rogue wave was calculated to be 112 feet – around 34 metres – tall… and other people who are way better at maths and know stuff about how waves work have figured out that it carried with it a potential energy of about 17,000 kilowatts per metre.

Which is a lot.

It remains to this day the largest recorded rogue wave ever observed which wasn’t a tsunami.

And with that little nugget of meteorological knowledge in your mind, you’re probably ready to take on the day on the markets, where – we’re all hoping – we won’t get the ASX equivalent of that washing over us all.

To help prep you in case you do need a life preserver, you’ll be forearmed with knowledge of what the fuss over the West Arunta is all about, thanks to Jess Cummins, and Nads McGrath has caught up with the guys who made a pacemaker the size of a grain of rice.

And, as always, below you’ll find a quick wrap of how the past 24 hours or so panned out, just in case you weren’t paying attention.

 

COMMODITY/FOREX/CRYPTO MARKET PRICES

Gold: US$2,030.50 (-0.39%)

Silver: US$22.550 (-0.54%)

Nickel (3mth): US$15,985.00/t (+0.00%)

Copper (3mth): US$8,374.19/t (-0.61%)

Oil (WTI): US$72.70 (+0.60%)

Oil (Brent): US$77.78 (+0.60%)

Iron 62pc Fe: US$130.50/t (-2.25%)

AUD/USD: 0.6509 (+0.06%)

Bitcoin: US$42,641.50 (+0.17%)

 

WHAT GOT YOU TALKING

If you missed our fireside chat with Race Oncology boss Daniel Tillett, here’s your chance to catch up.

 

 

YESTERDAY’S ASX SMALL CAP LEADERS

Here are the best performing ASX small cap stocks:

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Yesterday’s Small Cap Winners included:

The party was most definitely on at Bioxyne (ASX:BXN), after news that the company’s  wholly-owned subsidiary Breathe Life Sciences has been awarded a Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) licence to manufacture medical cannabis. And psilocybin. And MDMA.

That’s huge news for Bioxyne, as the licence also allows Breathe Life Sciences to produce “final dose form capsules for supply to authorised prescribers and clinical trials”.

Battery anode business Ecograf (ASX:EGR) surged 36%, despite not having anything of interest to tell the market – and I’m not entirely sure why. I’ll try and find out, but don’t hold your breath waiting for an answer just yet.

And a couple of the smaller goldies, namely Belararox and Great Western Exploration, saw significant post-lunch surges despite a lack of fresh announcements as well.

Red Metal continued its recent success, moving 21.5% higher on last week’s news of outstanding leach results received from initial metallurgical testing at the company’s new Sybella discovery.

Last week’s high-flyer Mako Gold (ASX:MKG) was at it again, rising another 16.6% after delivering a presentation to the 121/Mining Indaba Conference in Cape Town, South Africa.

The prezzo didn’t contain any salient information that the market didn’t already know about, by the looks of things – but it does tie up all of Mako’s recent great news in a pretty format, so there’s that.

 

YESTERDAY’S ASX SMALL CAP LAGGARDS

Here are the worst performing ASX small cap stocks:

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TRADING HALTS

Reward Minerals (ASX:RWD) – pending the release of an announcement in relation to its proposed acquisition of the Beyondie Project and associated entitlement offer.

Indiana Resources (ASX:IDA) – pending an announcement to the market in relation to a decision from the ICSID ad hoc Committee concerning the Claimants’ preliminary objections to the United Republic of Tanzania’s application for annulment of the Award pursuant to ICSID Arbitration Rule 41(5).

(ikr)

Kalamazoo Resources (ASX:KZR) – pending the release of an announcement pertaining to a material corporate transaction in relation to the disposal of the Ashburton Gold Project.

Anagenics (ASX:AN1) – pending the release of an ASX announcement regarding a proposed capital raise.

Flexiroam (ASX:FRX) –  pending the release of an announcement in relation to a capital raising.

Locality Planning Energy (ASX:LPE) – pending the release of an announcement in relation to a Board restructure.

 

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