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

Good morning everyone, and welcome to Tuesday, 24 October – a date on the calendar that sends shudders down the spine of every old-timey investor in the world, because today’s the day in 1929 that Wall Street crapped the bed.

They called it Black Thursday (it was a different time in America), and it got off to a terrible start, in the wake of a London Stock Exchange collapse in September, some terrible decisions on supply from the US Fed and then whispers around town that the wheels were about to come off the entire trolly.

The stock tickers of the day couldn’t keep up with the sheer volume of shares being traded, which left most investors basically gambling in the dark while they waited hours to see what prices they’d managed to get on the stocks they were dumping in wholesale quantities.

At the height of the sell-off, the Dow Jones had fallen more than 11%, wiping literally dozens of dollars of value off the market as it did so, sparking a lot of pearl clutching and fist shaking among New York’s newly-poor.

As the streets of Manhattan rang to the sounds of men shouting “Why, I oughta” at each other, some buildings and also the sky, four of the biggest bankers in town had a little meeting.

They ended up strong-arming the vice president of the exchange Richard Whitney into taking their money and placing massively above-market orders for certain blue chip stocks to halt the rout on the day, the market recovering to a loss of just 2.09% for the day.

With trading set to resume the following Monday, the US Fed got together to argue about what to do, taking turns to bark out contradictory orders until they were 100% sure that everything was going to be fine.

That resulted in Black Monday, which in turn led to Black Tuesday, and when all was said and done, some 23.05% of Wall Street’s value had vanished.

Most people don’t know this, but it wasn’t until a plucky young child, fresh from shouting out headlines as he sold newspapers on the corner of Fletcher and Pearl, kicked down the door of the US Federal Reserve.

“What you need to do is raise interest rates!” he hollered, in his squeakly little-boy voice. “Just raise them and raise them and raise them until you just can’t raise them no more!”

That boy was crowned Chairman of the Federal Reserve on the spot, a position he still holds today, despite being about 114 years old and as deaf as a post.

There’s obviously an important lesson in there somewhere, so I won’t bother re-telling it – instead, I’ll point you at Josh Chiat’s fresh look at the hot, hot heat around Canadian lithium, and Christian’s “I’ve got work confused with Facebook again” story on how Yamaha is making wooden boats that are 5 times stronger than steel. Oh wait, that’s tomorrow.

Today it’s Albo and China, he loses me on the regular, does Cheddars.

Plus, as always, here’s all the fiddly data and digits to get you up to speed this morning as well.

COMMODITY/FOREX/CRYPTO MARKET PRICES

Gold: US$1,973.95 (-0.36%)

Silver: US$22.96 (-1.67%)

Nickel (3mth): US$18,588/t (+0.37%)

Copper (3mth): US$7,948.50/t (-0.56%)

Oil (WTI): US$86.11 (-2.23%)

Oil (Brent): US$90.38 (-1.93%)

Iron 62pc Fe: US$118.45/t (-0.17%)

AUD/USD: 0.6336 (+0.42%)

Bitcoin: US$31,669 (+6.31%)

WHAT GOT YOU TALKING

Ground Breakers got you all talking on the socials yesterday – mostly because it’s about as interesting as hole-in-the-ground gossip can get.

Ground Breakers:

⛏️ Chilean major SQM moves in on more junior #lithium ground in the #Pilbara
⛏️ Rumours swirl MinRes wants a chunk of 2023 darling Wildcat Resources
⛏️ Materials fall; #graphite plays run hot https://t.co/vLNlUvRj9s

— Stockhead (@StockheadAU) October 23, 2023

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:

Yesterday’s Small Caps highlights were:

Aussie Medtech Chimeric Therapeutics (ASX:CHM), ended around +50% off the back of some positive clinical data for CLTX CAR T in heavily pretreated, late stage, recurrent Glioblastoma patients in its recently-run Phase 1A trial at City of Hope, one of the largest cancer research and treatment organisations in the US.

The headline news is that a “55% Disease Control Rate (DCR) was achieved in patients treated with CLTX CAR T, exceeding historical disease control rates of 20-37%.”

“Roughly 10 months’ median survival was demonstrated in patients that achieved disease control”, against survival expectations for patients after first line therapy that generally come in around the seven-month mark.

Triton Minerals (ASX:TON) was up 45% after signing on Soluções De Desenvolvimento Sustentável (SDS) to assist with the development of its Ancuabe and Cobra Plains Graphite Projects in Mozambique.

Wildcat Resources (ASX:WC8) got back in the headlines as well, this time with even more lithium at its Tabba Tabba after the third batch of assays from the company’s maiden drill program came back from the lab.

The intercepts: “Highlight the significant scale of the Tabba Tabba Lithium Project and the potential for a Tier-1 lithium deposit at the Leia Pegmatite,” which Wildcat says is now more than 1.5km long, more than 50m wide and more than 400m down plunge (250m vertical from surface), thickening at depth, and open laterally and at depth.

Immutep (ASX:IMM) jumped 20 per cent to 33¢ after the biotech company published positive clinical trial results for its lung cancer treatment.

Meanwhile, Odyssey Gold (ASX:ODY), Syrah Resources (ASX:SYR) and Renascor Resources (ASX:RNU) all rose because China’s making noises about seriously tightening up graphite supply around the world – probs because America told them “no more AI super-chips for you lot” last week.

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:

TRADING HALTS

European Lithium (ASX:EUR) – Pending an announcement in connection with the NASDAQ merger transaction.

Western Mines Group (ASX:WMG) – Pending announcement of a capital raising.

Matador Mining (ASX:MZZ) – Pending an announcement regarding a capital raising.

Anteris Technologies (ASX:AVR) – Pending an announcement in relation to a proposed capital raising.

Azure Minerals (ASX:AZS) – Pending the release of an announcement by the Company regarding a potential change of control transaction.