Top 10 at 11: Market broadly higher; CBA drags as small caps forge ahead

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.

Risk-on sentiment as US gov shutdown ends

Gold shot up almost 3% overnight as eight Democratic senators broke party lines, joining hands with Republicans to end the US government shut down.

It’s the longest government shutdown the United States has ever experienced, at 41 days, costing the US economy an estimated US$15 billion per week, according to various analysts’ estimates.

While there’s still plenty of procedural hoops to jump through, traders were upbeat on the news, pushing Wall Street indices to within a few percentage points of all-time highs.

On the ASX 200, that’s translated to some good momentum across the board – led by a gold-fuelled materials sector – but … Commonwealth Bank (ASX:CBA) is functioning as an oversized anchor this morning, limiting broader gains.

The thirteenth largest bank in the world by market cap, CBA has been whacked 3.4% in the first hour of trade, after essentially meeting market predictions in its most recent reporting.

When you’re trading at a 30x price-to-earnings ratio, “good” is apparently just not good enough. The ASX 200 Banks index is down 1.62% at time of writing.

A dip in the US dollar and the light at the end of the US government shutdown tunnel also pushed crude and base metal prices higher.

Brent rose 0.7% to US$64.06 a barrel, copper pushed up 3% and aluminium added 1%.

Iron ore also ticked up, climbing 0.6% to US$103.97 a tonne.

As of 10:45 AEST, the ASX 200 is up 0.18% or 15.9 points with 9 of 11 sectors on the up.

Overall, it’s looking like a bullish mood for the general market, and a decidedly bearish one over in finance and info tech.

SMALL CAP WINNERS

In the news…

Eagle Mountain Mining (ASX:EM2) has secured binding commitments to raise $1.66 million in a placement, with plans to raise a further $1.9 million in an entitlement issue.

EM2 is offering the new shares at an 11% discount to its 30-day VWAP at $0.009 each, with funds to go to exploration at the Silver Mountain project and the development of new exploration opportunities.

Corazon Mining (ASX:CZN) is gearing up for a maiden drilling program at the Two Pools gold project in WA. The company has expanded the project tenure another 50km2 to encompass extensions of the project’s greenstone belt to the north east.

Management says a review of geophys and sampling data from the new project area has highlighted multiple walk-up drill targets that have seen little modern exploration.

Sarytogan Graphite (ASX:SGA) has fielded the final batch of assays from a round of drilling designed to infill the first 25 years of mining at the namesake Sarytogan graphite deposit in Kazakhstan.

All 17 holes hit broad and high-grade graphitic carbon as anticipated, grading up to 50.2m at 34.5% TGC from surface. SGA is feeding the data into a mineral resource and ore reserve upgrade for the project.

SMALL CAP LAGGARDS

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