Top 10 at 11: Oil plummets but gold builds momentum as ASX struggles to find balance

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.

Oil tumbles, gold rips higher

It’s been an extremely choppy start to the session on the ASX 200 this morning. The bourse is zigzagging in a tight band just this side of negative.

Traders have plenty of macro and commodity movements to digest.

Oil plunged almost 4%, falling to US$62.71 a barrel of Brent crude after an OPEC report flagged global oil supply will equal demand sometime in 2026.

Gold futures tore in the other direction after hovering around the US$4100 mark for several weeks, bouncing 2.4% to around US$4200 an ounce. Silver is also on the move, lifting 4.4% to US$53.5 an ounce.

Most metals were broadly higher. Optimism in the commodities market seems to be picking up as the US government shutdown winds to a close. It’s the longest in US history, currently at 43 days.

Copper ticked up 1%, aluminium just about 0.7% and tin jumped 2.1%.

All that metals market trading is likely to offer some support for resources once again.

Materials is the only sector firmly in the green at present, trading up 1.03% as of about 10:30 am AEDT.

The market is down 0.25% at time of writing, with info tech and energy sectors leading losses.

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In the news…

ReNerve (ASX:RNV) has secured approval for use of its NervAlign Nerve Cuff in US Department of Defense and Veteran Affairs hospitals. RNV’s product can now be used in 51 military hospitals and 424 clinics, as well as 170 VA medical centres and more than 1100 outpatient facilities.

The company has already received both an initial purchase order and a repeat order from federal medical facilities, an early sign of confidence in the system.

Havilah Resources (ASX:HAV) has inked a term sheet with Sandfire Resources (ASX:SFR) to advance the Kalkaroo copper-gold project in South Australia.

SFR has the option to earn up to 80% in the project via a two-stage earn-in structure, beginning with an upfront payment of $105 million – 70% stocks and 30% cash.

Sandfire has agreed to invest a further $105 million on completion of a new pre-feasibility study. The new study will include a minimum of 20,000m of extra infill and extensional drilling.

The larger company will also commit $30 million to regional exploration of the project tenure over the next 24 months.

Trek Metals (ASX:TKM) has fielded high-grade manganese results from rock chips, grading up to 58% manganese. The maximum natural grade of the mineral maxes out – theoretically – at 63% manganese oxide, meaning TKM is approaching the highest grades possible.

Management reckons there’s potential for a large manganese system at the Christmas Creek project in WA, and has already collected more rock chips from the project with assays expected in late December.

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