Top 10 at 11: ASX dives out the gate; miners capitalise on critical mineral 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.

Bears wake from hibernation?

All good things must come to an end eventually.

The ASX may well have ended its hot streak for the moment, down 0.62% or 55 points in the first hour with seven of 11 sectors sliding lower at the time of writing.

That said, the trading day is yet young… but it’ll need a pretty strong turnaround from here to set things right.

While losses are fairly limited in most sectors, with four shedding less than 0.1%, healthcare is weighing heavy enough for them all.

The health sector is plunging, down a full 5.87% at present. Sector heavyweight CSL (ASX:CSL) is creating much of those headwinds this morning, shedding more than 9%.

The biotech giant is spinning off its influenza business into a separate ASX entity and cutting 3,000 jobs as part of a business restructure that will incur one-off costs of $560 million to $620 million in FY26.

Both oil and iron ore prices ticked up overnight. Oil is sitting at about US$66.49 a barrel of Brent at present while iron ore gained less than 0.1% to rise to US$101.62 a tonne.

Gold futures slid 0.1% to US$3378 an ounce, with spot gold trading at US3335.11 an ounce.

SMALL CAP WINNERS

In the news…

Magnetite Mines (ASX:MGT) has zeroed in on clay-hosted rare earth mineralisation at the Ironback Hill project, next door to MGT’s magnetite iron ore deposit.

Magnetite’s re-analysis of previous drilling revealed total rare earth oxide results up to 1153 parts per million, which management reckons warrants some low-cost follow up exploration.

Argent Biopharma (ASX:RGT) is in the process of acquiring the core operating assets and IP of AusCann Group Holdings Ltd, including the Neuvis proprietary SEDDS drug delivery platform.

The acquisition will also include any related intellectual property, a 48% shareholding in CannPal Animal Therapeutics Pty Ltd and AC8’s 19.99% shareholding in ECC Pharm Ltd.

RGT says it’s a key step in meeting the financial and qualitative requirements for a planned US national listing for the company.

iTech Minerals (ASX:ITM) is riding the antimony gravy train, identifying two fresh 300m zones of high-grade antimony at the Reynolds Range project in the Northern Territory. The company also identified coincident gold, assaying up to 24 g/t from surface sampling.

ITM’s historical geological data suggests the zones may be about 14m thick, grading up to 30.6% antimony (Sb) in rock chips at the Sabre prospect and up to 15.9% Sb at Falchion.

The company is moving to obtain drilling approvals to test all three identified antimony targets at Reynolds later this year.

SMALL CAP LAGGARDS

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