Top 10 at 11: Small cap gold stocks shine despite early ASX dip

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.

Small cap gold stocks outperform

The ASX 200 has fallen 0.15% as of about 10:30 am AEST, trending down from a new record closing high yesterday.

It’s not a great start to the day for the majority of the market, with seven sectors down, one unchanged and three making progress.

Resources is leading gains, up 2.21% with energy (+0.81%) and health care (+0.69%) trailing.

The ASX 200 Resources index is flying along, adding 2.15%, but the All Ord Gold sub index has fallen 0.91%.

While that doesn’t bode well for gold stocks in general, several are resisting the riptides to make big gains this morning.

WINNERS

In the news…

Santa Fe Minerals (ASX:SFM) has laid claim to the Eburnea gold project, acquiring it from Turaco Gold (ASX:TCG) in return for 12 million shares, 4m performance rights and a potential 2.5% net smelter royalty.

The company has also locked in commitments for a $1.2m share placement, offered at a 61% premium to its last closing price, to fund exploration at Eburnea. The project has produced broad gold hits of up to 26m at 4.82 g/t and a bonanza intersection of 3m at 35.79 g/t gold that SFM is keen to explore further.

Australian Oil (ASX:AOK) is moving to offload debt from its books, coming to a settlement with former director Gary Jeffery and his company Dungay Resources to eliminate a $1m loan and the balance of interest accrued.

AOK will pay $28k and issue 36m shares to satisfy the total debt of just over $184k, settling the matter.

Falcon Metals (ASX:FAL) reckons it’s hit Bendigo Goldfield-style mineralisation in the first hole drilled at the Blue Moon prospect, situated within the prolific Garden Gully anticline.

FAL’s drill bit hit 2.4m at 8.4 g/t gold from 600m of depth, peaking at 0.3m at 48.7 g/t gold in an area that has produced 5.2Moz of gold at an average grade of 15 g/t.

Management thinks there’s a good chance there are multiple quartz veins and thicker saddle reefs in the immediate Blue Moon area, drilling a wedge hole to better target the wider bands of mineralisation.

Thunderbird Resources (ASX:THB) is also rising on gold-related news this morning; rock chip assays from its Kookabookra project in NSW returned particularly impressive assays of up to 153.5 g/t gold.

The company is zeroing-in on the Mt Secret and Mannix prospects in particular, where gold-in-soil results up to 926 parts per billion coupled with the high-grade rock chip results point to potential gold systems.

There’s also more than 400 historical mine workings on the project – THB has boots on the ground at the Bear Hill and Butcher Reef prospects to sample them.

LAGGARDS

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