• ASX Emerging Companies index XEC fell 1.5% this week
  • Meteoric Resources Lives up to its name with cracking Rare Earth numbers (REE) out of Brazil
  • Energy Sector wins 2022

This is where we’re leaving the Aussie benchmark for micro-cap companies, the S&P/ASX Emerging Companies (XEC) in 2022.

A mighty volatile, yet impressively steady descent.

Via Market Index 

It’s not been an easy run, down 1.5% this week, adding to a bad month and a 2022 worth cremating.

Via Market Index 

 

Once again, while sectors like Utilities, Materials, Health and Consumer stocks retreated on the benchmark ASX 200 (XJO), the only show of defiance came out of the Energy Sector, led by the old school producers.

This is the year energy stocks have had:

The XEJ is up more than 1% since Monday morning, ending a year where it performed like a God’s first ever test run of the miraculous Atlantic salmon.

Via Market Index

Weekly economic overview

Once more unto the breach went equities during a week of light Christmas volumes across developed markets.

Global indices largely retreated over the last week as the big name central banks went more hawkish than expected fueling to recession fears along with weak economic data. The week before the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank (ECB) and the Bank of England (BoE) clipped hope as was their aim, so when the Bank of Japan made sure that didn’t happen.

For the week Chinese shares were fairly insulated, down about 1%. Despite the shock announcement from a BoJ most of thought was actually just an empty building with a nice facade, Japanese shares barely registered a sweat, down 1.2%.

In the US shares fell harder, short 2.2%, after Tesla shed another bunch –  9.2% on Friday to $124.86 – that’s the EV hero’s worst score since September 2020.

The news is just all bad over in the House of Musk – the boss is distracted, the team is missing production targets, they’re slashing the price ($US7,500 discounts) on its formerly inaccessible fleet as sales drop, while a gargantuan 8 car pile up involving a self-driving Tesla all make for bad driving ahead.

EU markets shed 3.2%, I’m in France and I can tell you no-one seems to mind.

However, the negative global sentiment has been hitting home. The All Ords pulled back by 1% this week. Aussie bond yields fell as they did in the states and Europe, but again…

Elsewhere, commodity prices were mixed with energy doing good and iron ore and metals doing bad. The Aussie dollar didn’t do much other than decline a wee bit against a stagnant USD.

Back to the BoJ though, all 47 economists surveyed by Bloomberg expected yield-curve consistency. All 47 were proven wrong by the surprise hike. And since then, core Japanese consumer prices are rising at their fastest rate since about 1980, with energy pushing inflation up 3.7% for November year-on-year.

And that’s why I only listen to myself and Taylor Swift.

 

ASX IPOs this week:

SOCO CORPORATION (ASX:SOC)

Listing: 23 December

IPO: $5m at $0.20

One lonely IPO is left before Christmas and it’s done pretty damn well.

Via IG Markets

SOCO Corporation is an Aussie-based IT consultancy, specialising in the delivery of cloud solutions, business applications and integration projects – with a particular focus on Microsoft solutions.

The company’s key target markets include federal government, local and state government, along with large corporates.

The offer was well oversubscribed, raising a total of $5M at $0.20 per share for an indicative market capitalisation of $25.3M. The IPO attracted strong support from institutional and retail investors. This included significant take-up from SOCO’s employees, further solidifying alignment towards SOCO’s continuing success.

There was no sell-down as part of the IPO, with SOCO’s founding team retaining a 79.2% shareholding and electing to voluntarily escrow 100% of their holding for 12-months from listing.

The IPO represents SOCO’s first ever external capital raising since its founding nine years ago. The only tradable shares will be those issued at the IPO.

 

TAITON RESOURCES (ASX:T88)

This explorer listed on Monday with its fully underwritten IPO raising $7 million to conduct exploration activities for its three projects.

The company is focused predominantly on gold and polymetallic, and has three projects including the Highway and Challenger Westin projects in South Australia and Lake Barlee in Western Australia.

“Our exploration plans have started, and we are wasting no time in getting the planning ready for more intense exploration activities in the coming 2023,” MD Noel Ong said.

The Highway hosts major IOCG (iron oxide copper gold) deposits including Olympic Dam, Carrapateena and Prominent Hill.

The Olympic Dam deposit, discovered by Western Mining back in 1975, is considered one of the world’s largest iron-oxide-copper-gold (IOCG) deposits and the fourth largest copper deposit globally. It’s located roughly 350m below the surface.

Rigorous geophysics programs have provided compelling evidence for not only an extension to the OME Domain, but also that Merino Prospect itself is likely a shallow hydrothermal system, i.e. by way of the zircon isotope analyses.

Notably, the evaluation of the data shows that Merino is potentially tapping the source rocks that feed the Olympic Dam IOCG Belt.

 

ASX SMALL CAP LEADERS:

Here are the best performing ASX small cap stocks for December 19 to 23

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Goodness me it’s the right time to have some REE up your sleeve.

Living up to its name and then some, Meteoric Resources’ (ASX:MEI) gained about 230% this week, with news that the new Caldeira project does indeed contain ionic adsorption clay REEs.

“These results show a considerable portion of the target REEs are adsorbed onto clays allowing for recovery by a simple washing process, unlike the case for many REE projects, where the REEs are tightly bound within the mineral lattice or are even in colloidal suspension requiring a much more intensive treatment process,” MEI reported.

Merry Xmas.

 

 

Here are the worst performing ASX small cap stocks for December 19 to 23

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