Top 10 at 11: ASX slips on banks and healthcare but small caps enjoy exploration success

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.

Can Tech power the ASX against health and wealth declines?

The ASX has plunged 0.21% in the first hour of trade, dragging right out of the gate on losses in healthcare and finance sectors.

The big banks are weighing heavily – their index is already down 0.95% for the morning.

There’s some life in the consumer staples and energy sectors, but technology is the only proper rallying point this morning, up 2.27%.

The majority of our top uranium stocks are also heating up.

The Global X Uranium ETF jumped 3% overnight, with similar movements in other uranium-pegged products.

Oil added 0.8% to US$68.62 a barrel of Brent overnight, before a minor correction downward this morning to US$68.24.

Gold futures also lifted 0.7% to US$3474 an ounce as the US dollar continued to soften, steadily approaching an all-time high set in April. Spot gold also lifted, trading at US$3414 an ounce.

SMALL CAP WINNERS

In the news…

McLaren Minerals (ASX:MML) is drilling up more high-grade titanium hits at its namesake Mclaren project in WA, striking up to 1m at 24.22% heavy minerals from 13m in a drill hole immediately to the north of the current resource boundary.

It’s a good sign the mineral body is larger than originally thought, with the drill core highlighting continuous, broad mineralisation. It’s also good timing, as MML has a prefeasibility study and a resource update in the pipeline.

Asra Minerals (ASX:ASR) has officially launched its share consolidation, combining its securities on a 1 for 10 basis. It’s an automatic share price upgrade for the company, as it reduces shares on offer ten-fold while raising the value of each share by the same factor.

Magnum Mining and Exploration (ASX:MGU) is following up on some solid exploration hits with a round of leach testing on high-grade rare earth samples from the Palmares REE project.

MGU has collected rock chip samples up to 1.32% total rare earths (13082 ppm TREO) with strong neodymium and praseodymium content, and the G2 pegmatites on the tenure have averaged about 3977 ppm TREO – we’ll need to wait for the drill bit to confirm just how economical the mineralisation might be.

SMALL CAP LAGGARDS

At Stockhead, we tell it like it is. While Asra Minerals 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.