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Good morning everyone, and welcome to 29 February, 2024 – an important day on the calendar because it doesn’t happen very often… once every four years, to be precise, because otherwise we’d lose around 6 hours every year, and when that kind of time starts to pile up down the back of the couch, it’s a bugger to clean up properly when people are coming over.

It’s also an important day on the scientific calendar, as it was on this day in 1908 that Dutch scientists managed to produce solid helium for the first time.

Helium is, of course, most commonly found naturally occurring inside birthday balloons, but at the right temperature it will turn into a liquid.

However, it takes a combination of low temperature and extremely high pressure to get helium to crystalise into a solid form, which means it is – physically speaking – the precise opposite of an elderly gentleman’s junk.

The good news is that you don’t need to be under that sort of pressure to go hard on the ASX today, because we’ve got Cam’s look at what’s happening in Canada’s critical minerals scene, and Eddy’s deep dive into local health stocks to get you all riled up before the market opens – including more details on the one what spiked 400 PER CENT yesterday.

And, as always there’s words and numbers down below for you to scour now and then pretend to be shocked by when the market opens later on this morning.

 

COMMODITY/FOREX/CRYPTO MARKET PRICES

Gold: US$2,033.59 (+0.20%)

Silver: US$22.44 (+0.06%)

Nickel (3mth): US$17,460/t (+1.69%)

Copper (3mth): US$8,464/t (+0.09%)

Oil (WTI): US$78.44 (-0.55%)

Oil (Brent): US$83.47 (-0.21%)

Iron 62pc Fe: US$125.36/t (-0.38%)

AUD/USD: 0.6496 (-0.70%)

Bitcoin: US$60,165 (+5.5%)

 

WHAT GOT YOU TALKING

Earlybird Eddy’s been ripping the Band-Aids off to get to the bottom of what’s up with our local market’s health stocks.

 

 

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:

Mauling markets like an incensed bull shark of no fixed address was the suddenly punchy Aussie drug discovery and development company Nyrada (ASX:NYR).

Nyrada’s lead Brain Injury Program drug candidate NYR-BI03 – “a first-in-class therapy with a novel mechanism of action targeting significant market opportunity” – demonstrated strong efficacy in reducing injury in a preclinical study, the company has reported.

NYR specialises in novel small molecule therapeutics to treat neurological and cardiovascular diseases. The company went proper ballistic, powering through more than +420% – and there was much rejoicing.

Also making big moves was the everywhere-listed Ecograf (ASX:EGR) after reporting positive findings from a research program completed by the Helmholtz Institute in Germany, where EcoGraf’s proprietary processing technology has been used to purify graphite particles recovered from end-of-life lithium-ion batteries.

EcoGraf purified the recovered graphite particles to battery grade specification.

The German Government funded program then compared the electrochemical performance of (the recycled) EcoGraf HFfree graphite with a number of commercial battery graphite products. And there was much rejoicing.

The company says further research is required before anyone sells the house.

Finally, 5E Advanced Materials (ASX:5EA) was still killing it on Wednesday.

 

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

Ora Banda (ASX:OBM) – pending the release of an announcement regarding a proposed capital raising.

BikeExchange (ASX:BEX) – pending the expected release of an announcement relating to an accelerated non renounceable entitlement offer.

Athena Resources (ASX:AHN) – pending the release of an announcement regarding a proposed capital raising.