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Good morning everyone, and welcome to 16 February, 2024 – a notable day for good manners everywhere, as it was on this day in the Year 600 that Pope Gregory the Great issued the formal papal decree that “God Bless You” was the correct response to a sneeze.

It took a while to catch on, as the previous response –  “...Dude!”, accompanied by an angry look – was quite popular, and much easier to say.

“God bless you” has, obviously, been shortened to “Bless you” in the 1,400 years since then, and it’s only in the past 10-12 years that it was shortened even further in the United States to immediate gunfire, followed by sirens.

To help you avoid ASX emergencies this morning, we’ve got a bunch of wonderful work by the Stockhead team – including more startling insights from the RIU Explorers conference courtesy of Josh Chiat, and Cam Drummond got up extra early to travel to Africa just to bring you the latest news on all the critical minerals there. What a guy!

And, as always there’s words and numbers down below to keep you busy while you wait for the somewhat ponderous Stockhead servers to load the rest of your morning’s news in the background.

Should be ready in 3… 2…

 

COMMODITY/FOREX/CRYPTO MARKET PRICES

Gold: US$2,004.46 (+0.61%)

Silver: US$22.92 (+2.45%)

Nickel (3mth): US$16,346/t (+0.52%)

Copper (3mth): US$8,197/t (-0.76%)

Oil (WTI): US$78.09 (+1.89%)

Oil (Brent): US$82.81 (+1.48%)

Iron 62pc Fe: US$129.17/t (+0.05%)

AUD/USD: 0.6527 (+0.50%)

Bitcoin: US$51,665 (+0.05%)

 

WHAT GOT YOU TALKING

If you missed the mail on what’s happening in Canada’s mining sector, here’s everything you need to know…

 

 

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:

Wordpress Table Plugin

 

Yesterday’s Small Cap Winners included:

James Bay Minerals (ASX:JBY) was at the top of the leader charts early on Thursday, posting a 42% gain on news that a review of aeromagnetic and spectromagnetic survey results across its flagship Joule Property, within the 100%-owned La Grande Lithium Project in the James Bay region of Quebec, Canada, has generated significant new rare earths and uranium targets.

The announcement includes this nugget of information from Joel Dube from Dynamic Discovery Geoscience, who commented: “As a comparison, Joule is only one of two projects over the entire James Bay area, including the Matoush Uranium Project area, with maximum eU values exceeding 20 ppm, while the global average is approximately 0.5 ppm. This is considering a thorough review of over 80,000 l-km of public airborne gamma-ray spectrometric data.”

James Bay executive director, Andrew Dornan, was quick to point out that the company “will remain firmly focused on LCT pegmatites with potential for world-class lithium discoveries”, but these results “cannot be ignored”.

“As we have been doing for lithium, we will continue to sample and understand all relevant minerals on our properties,” Dornan said.

Olympio Metals (ASX:OLY) surged throughout the morning despite no fresh news, as did Yojee (ASX:YOJ) – they were trading 32% and 25% higher respectively by lunchtime.

Way2VAT (ASX:W2V) was surging on news that it’s set to roll out a new product called “AI-AP Compliance”, which the company says is a world-first AI-driven automated accounts payable auditing product, which it says has been built out to tie in seamlessly with the rest of its AI-driven software suite.

Large capper Altium (ASX:ALU) was also on the winners list – it’s not often we get to see an $8 billion company this high up in the rankings – so it’s definitely worth another mention, because it’s currently trading 28% higher than it was Wednesday.

And in late mail, it seems like Bellavista Resources (ASX:BVR) lit a fire under a few folks’ backsides at the RIU Explorers conference – after posting its presentation as an ASX announcement, it’s barrelled through a very tidy +30% jump.

 

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:

Wordpress Table Plugin

 

TRADING HALTS

First Au (ASX:FAU) – pending the release of an announcement regarding a major project acquisition.

Hazer Group (ASX:HZR) – pending an announcement regarding a proposed capital raising.

Triangle Energy (ASX:TEG) – pending an announcement is made relating to a proposed capital raising.

GCX Metals (ASX:GCX) – pending an announcement regarding a proposed capital raising.

Hastings Technology Metals (ASX:HAS) – pending an announcement to the market regarding a material tolling and offtake agreement.

Prodigy Gold (ASX:PRX) – pending an announcement responding to false market information about the payment of dividends.

Way2VAT (ASX:W2V) – pending a response to an ASX Price Query.

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