Top 10 at 11: Helium and lithium are bright spots on a fairly grim ASX morning.

Good morning, and welcome to Stockhead’s Top 10 at shortly-before-11-ish, which is meant to highlight the best (and sometimes worst) performing ASX stocks in morning trade using live data, to provide a short, sharp update to help frame the trading day by showing the biggest movers in percentage terms.

The market opens at 10am (eastern time) and the data is taken at 10:15am, once every ASX stock has started trading – for better or worse – and then I do my best to make sense of who’s moving where and why it might be happening.

Local markets have opened lower, down close to 1.5% after a collapse on Wall Street overnight, caused by a narrow miss on CPI data that put the final nail in the coffin for accelerated rate cuts by the US Fed. Spooked by the news, the S&P 500 fell by -1.44%, the Dow Jones index was down by -1.39%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq slipped by -1.86%.

Here’s what’s been happening since the doors were opened this morning

WINNERS

Stocks highlighted in yellow have made market-moving announcements (click headings to sort).

Positive news for Blue Star Helium (ASX:BNL) , after the company revealed results from initial testing and evaluation at Bolling #4 SESW well, which resulted in gas to surface flow of >4% helium under vacuum with flow up to 268.4 mscf/d. The company has engineers evaluating well production potential.

St George Mining (ASX:SGQ) has reported identifying a series of strong kilometre-long lithium soil anomalies in areas not yet drill tested for lithium at the company’s Mt Alexander prospect, with one anomaly, measuring 1.7km x 1.3km, along strike from the Manta Prospect, where drilling by St George intersected a 121m thick fractionated pegmatite.

LOSERS

Stocks highlighted in yellow have made market-moving announcements (click headings to sort).

SSR Mining (ASX:SSR) has suspended operations at its Çöpler mine in Turkey as a result of a large slip on the heap leach pad. There are news reports that up to 9 miners are currently unaccounted for.

Great Western Exploration (ASX:GTE) has lost ground this morning, after the company reported assays from the phase 2 aircore drilling programme at the Firebird Gold Project which included 6m @ 1.05g/t Au from 124m, 6m @ 1.02g/t from 82m, and 4m @ 0.75g/t from 62m.

Singular Health Group (ASX:SHG) is showing a drop this morning on news that it has firm commitments to raise approximately $4.05m from institutional, sophisticated and professional investors via the issue of 36,843,111 fully paid ordinary shares at $0.11 per share, a 9.5% discount to a 20 day VWAP of A$0.121 as at 8 February 2024.

Similarly, Nova Eye Medical (ASX:EYE) is showing a loss after announcing the completion of a placement and institutional entitlement offer of $5.1 million, with a fully underwritten retail entitlement offer for a further $2.9 million for a total capital raise of $8 million.