Top 10 at 11: Gold and bank stocks drag ASX lower; resource stocks stake new claims

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, once trading kicks off in earnest.

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

Gold edges lower, dragging ASX with it

The spot price of gold slid about 0.8% over the weekend, falling from US$3346.5 an ounce on Friday to US$3322.85 this morning.

That’s put enough pressure on gold stocks to lop 1.71% off the All Ords Gold index in the first hour of trade, dragging the ASX 200 down 0.09% in the process.

While defensive stocks like the utilities sector (+2.68%) are performing well, 6 of 11 sectors are in the red at present, joined by the ASX 200 Banks (-0.5%) and the wider 200 Resources index (-0.37%).

Despite all that, several resource small caps are staking new ground today, gearing up to take advantage of gold and rare earth opportunities…

WINNERS

In the news…

Bayan Mining and Minerals (ASX:BMM) has staked 72 lode claims in the Mojave Desert of California in a bid to form the Desert Star rare earth project.

It’s a Tier 1 area for rare earth mineralisation, just 4.5km from the Mountain Pass REE Mine (supplied 15.8% of global rare earth production in 2020) and 4.7km from Dateline Resources’ (ASX:DTR) Colosseum project, which has shown similar radio metric signatures for REE mineralisation as Mountain Pass.

BMM will begin with a desktop review, field recon and rock chip sampling to drum up some early drilling targets.

Back on Australian soil, BPM Minerals (ASX:BPM) is preparing to begin drilling at its newly acquired Forelands gold project in the Yilgarn Craton–Albany Fraser Orogen margin of WA.

The project has already produced bonanza-grade hits up to 3m at 65.8 g/t gold from 25m of depth in drilling, and BPM reckons Foreland presents a near-term resource conversion opportunity.

LAGGARDS

In the news…

Argosy Minerals (ASX:AGY) is trading lower in the first hour after completing an oversubscribed share placement, raising $2m at $0.025 per share – despite the dip, AGY is still trading at a premium to the placement price.

AGY will funnel the new funding to an ongoing engineering and optimisation study for the 12,000-tonne-per-annum Rincon lithium project and strategic plans for the Tonopah lithium project in the US.

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