Top 10 at 11: Another dour start to ASX trade, but small caps maintain gold focus

Morning, and welcome to Stockhead’s Top 10 (at 11… ish), highlighting the movers and shakers on the ASX in early-doors trading.

With the market opening at 10am sharp eastern time, the data is taken at 10.15am in the east, once trading kicks off in earnest.

In brief, this is what the market has been up to this morning.

ASX enters fourth day of losses

The ASX has started the day in the red for a fourth day in a row, sliding 0.54% or 47.8 points in the first hour of trade.

It’s not looking great for the day’s momentum, with eight of 11 sectors down and little movement to speak of in the three green sectors.

An extended gold rally pushing prices to new heights has still not been enough to reverse the ASX 200’s course, despite another 1.84% jump to spot prices overnight.

Gold is now hovering around US$3542.31 an ounce.

US sanctions targeting Iranian oil supply chains and continued disruptions from destroyed Russian crude refineries drove oil up 1.5% to US$69.14 a barrel of Brent.

With our market taking an L for the morning, gold stocks have once again emerged from the bearish scuffle to offer us a bit of sparkle.

SMALL CAP WINNERS

In the news…

ABX Group (ASX:ABX) is flying after ANSTO leach tests extracted more than 70% of valuable heavy rare earths dysprosium and terbium from 100kg Deep Leads project samples.

The metallurgical testing also revealed Deep Leads rare earths can be extracted at higher pHs than first thought, lowering impurities and reagent costs while also reducing environmental impact.

Management says ABX is on track to deliver a mixed rare earth carbonate sample by the fourth quarter of this year.

Bubalus Resources’ (ASX:BUS) review of the Wilson’s Hill gold project has highlighted some strong zones of gold prospectivity, near historical workings that produced high grades above 20 g/t gold.

Drilling by earlier explorers indicates the gold structures could reach 250m of depth, taking the form of both Bendigo goldfield style mineralisation and a new saddle-reef style.

BUS is looking to repeat the success of Falcon Minerals’ (ASX:FAL) Blue Moon project next door, which recently struck 1.2m at 543 g/t gold from 544.2m in diamond drilling.

Flagship Minerals (ASX:FLG) has also kicked off a data review, looking to turn a 1.05Moz gold foreign estimate (NI 43-101 Canadian code) into a JORC estimate for the Pantanillo gold project in Chile.

FLG obtained a sizeable 700-file, 10,000-document data det for Pantanillo from Anglo American Norte, revealing very shallow, surprisingly broad gold intercepts of up to 193m at 1.01 g/t from 28m and 293m at 0.53 g/t gold from 9m.

Platina Resources (ASX:PGM) has snapped up the Mt McKenna gold project in the Yilgarn Craton of WA, near Genesis Mineral’s (ASX:GMD) 3.9Moz Laverton project.

Management reckons the project is near-drill ready, having produced rock chip samples up to 248 g/t gold and rotary air blast drilling assays of 4m at 3.41 g/t gold within 16m at 1.05 g/t gold from 32m.

SMALL CAP LAGGARDS

 At Stockhead, we tell it like it is. While Bubalus Resources is a Stockhead advertiser, it did not sponsor this article.

This article does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.