Weekly ASX small cap wrap: Pranks wrap up a wild week

It has been a short week but it hasn’t stopped the ASX from bouncing up and down with the market looking set to close up on April Fool’s Day. Let’s hope that’s not a joke.

On that note here are some of notable pranks this year – not including a certain German car giant’s misfiring yesterday or that South Australian tourism ad that we are still not sure if it’s actually real or not.

Popular Western Australia Premier Mark McGowan has pulled a prank on the state, declaring that it now has an official coffee and sandwich order.

A long mac topped up and a continental roll, to be precise.

Meanwhile, Madam Tussauds Sydney joked that it would honour ‘Karens’ with their own wax figure – including “the signature asymmetrical bob and highlights, she’ll have acrylic nails and over-sized sunnies”.

Lipton is also in on the action, claiming it has developed a ‘self-jiggling’ tea bag after years of testing and collaboration with the brightest automation engineers in Chippendale.

Sadly, Google has declined for the second year in a row to pull off one of its elaborate pranks.

The ASX 200 is up 0.48 per cent this morning, setting the stage for the ASX to close up this week.

ASX SMALL CAP WINNERS

Red Sky Energy (ASX:ROG) +200%

This weeks’ top gainer is up on no news, telling the ASX that it was aware of no reason for the recent gains other than its release last week about oil pay in the Killanoola oil project in South Australia.

Red Sky had noted at that time that petrophysical analysis had indicated that its Killanoola Southeast-1 well had intersected 16m of net oil pay, more than 10 times what it was expecting.

This zone will be perforated prior to an extended production test.

88 Energy (ASX:88E) +139%

Second on the list of major small cap gainers is yet another oil and gas company.

88 Energy shares have soared since it reported that it had encountered multiple potentially hydrocarbon bearing zones in the Nanushuk Formation whilst drilling its Merlin-1 exploration well.

Wireline logging is currently underway to confirm whether mobile hydrocarbons are present.

Here are the best performing ASX small cap stocks for March 26 – April 1 [intraday]:

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ASX SMALL CAP LOSERS

Atrum Coal (ASX:ATU) -78%

Shares in coal developer Atrum Coal have plummeted since coming out of suspension on Monday.

Over the past month, the company the termination of an underwriting agreement with Argonaut Capital Limited and Shaw and Partners Limited after the recent reinstatement of Alberta’s 1979 coal policy, which is deemed a material adverse impact.

The policy and the initiation of a process to consult fully with all Albertans including First Nations, communities, industry and other land users on the introduction of a new coal policy led to halting all site activities at its Elan coking coal project to focus on the stakeholder consultation process.

Here are the worst performing ASX small cap stocks for March 26 – April 1 [intraday]:

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