The ASX Emerging Companies index is up around 2.76% on Friday. It’s a good win and makes the five day loss bearable 3.8% lower than Monday morning.

But right now, I’m staring at the ASX 200 index, the time is 3.45pm on Friday 25th February and it is entirely and appropriately – dead flat.

Flatty, flat, flat, horizontal and just perfectly splayed.

That may’ve changed by the time you read this, but frankly you’d be better off going with what I’m seeing – a confused and tormented universe reaching out for some kind of meaning. In this instance – through the movement and value of our biggest Aussie businesses at the end of a most combustible week where something terrible and meaningless began for no meaningful or terribly righteous reason (that I can grasp).

So before we pull apart the fiscal mechanics of the day’s trade – consider this instead: ‘Synchronicity’ is a term originally coined by psychologist Carl Jung that refers to deeply meaningful coincidences which mysteriously occur.

T’was uber-shrink Carl Jung who coined the term synchronicity to describe deeply meaningful moments which are nothing but chance occurrences – from a statistical point of view – but are bear significance in that they may seem to validate personal, often paranormal ideas

Jung said these are those instances in ordinary life which seem way too significant to be mere garden-variety coincidence or even serendipitous (see Cusack, John: I have not been hot for a long time).

 

Serendipity:

noun
  1. the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way
  2. not having to sit through the film Serendipity, but also getting to see the snog at the end

 

We call them ‘a sign from the gods,’ but the underlying idea is simple enough: that in much of life, there is unity in diversity. Like indices, or possibly a good ETF.

So yes, the benchmark is flat, the world is messed up. Have some synchronicity, it’ll make you feel better.

What actually went down today

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed 0.3% higher in a crazy, Fog of War, need-to-see-a-shrink session of just outright volatility. The S&P 500 rallied to gain 1.5% (honestly, WTF).

The Nasdaq, tech-heavy or not, smashed it. Utterly. Up 3.3%.

Europe, now at war, saw all its major indices retreat.

US president Joe Biden promises to coordinate on releasing a bunch of oil reserves, because he also probably saw this morning’s tweet of a huge European purchase of Russian oil.

Oil pared some of its earlier gains after that, Brent crude had surged as high as $105.78 a barrel.

Gold is as good as it was in September 2020.

Iron ore looked a little lower, I thought. Not depressed, just slightly down.

Meet some wheat

Globally, wheat is the leading source of vegetable protein in human staple foods like crumpets, Nutri-Grain and Hoegaarden.

Now say goodbye to wheat

Because Russia and Ukraine – two of the top five global exporters – appear intent on having a good, long scrap and in doing so threaten global supply at a time when the market for agri-commodities is already strung-out and stressed.

Anxious flour millers in Indonesia, the world’s no. 2 largest and second most anxious wheat importer behind a super-stressed Egypt, rely on the Black Sea crop, particularly Ukraine’s to feed their nation.

Now those East Asian buyers are suddenly competing hard for Australian supply amid a rush to secure the looming shortfall.

We’re a net exporter of wheat to some 50 or so countries. Now – as the fifth largest wheat exporter and something of a local – Asian buyers are seeing Aussie wheat as a safe haven, according to S&P Global Platts , whose Australian Premium White wheat index has been on a steady rise since near Australia Day.

China is driving demand, forcing other Asian buyers like Indonesia to book Aussie wheat well in advance and adding to buyers’ list of worries are the logistical bottlenecks as shipping schedules get flipped again as the front 2-3 months are becoming tight.

CBA’s director of agri-strategy, Tobin Gorey says the wheat price surge just surged again overnight.

So while you pay more and more to fill up your car at the servo, grab some bread too and make a point of enjoying it.

 

What’s on the IPO menu, since these two delayed again?

Catalano Seafood (ASX:CSF) due on the 24 February with $6m at $0.20

Let’s hope the seafood specialist is faster with its fish than with going public.

Catalano has plans to go bigger and badder with its distribution network, hoping to even roll out its Seafood Management Solution to supermarkets.

Omnia Metals Group (ASX:OM1) due on the 21st for an IPO worth $5.5m at, 0.20 cents. Never showed up either.

Eddy says explorer will be focused on two projects, the Ord Basin project along the WA/NT border, and the Albany-Fraser project in the state’s southwest.

The company says meaningful exploration around the Ord Basin has been limited over the past 50 years, so the project represents “a district scale, greenfields exploration opportunity for copper, nickel and PGE deposit types.”

At the Albany-Fraser project, Omnia plans to leverage historical data to explore for intrusive-hosted nickel-copper sulphide deposits.

 

And here are the ones (who’ve said) they’d be listing in early March:

5E Advanced Materials (ASX:5EA)

Listing: 2 March

5EA is set to become the new name and parent company of American Pacific Borates Limited (ASX:ABR) – with the company set to list the US via a Nasdaq Direct Listing in February.

All shares held by ABR shareholders will be transferred to 5EA – and ABR says it will be possible to transfer holdings from ASX CDIs to NASDAQ shares and vice versa. The focus is still on the development of the Fort Cady Borate Project.

 

Many Peaks Gold (ASX:MPG)

Listing: 2 March

IPO: $5.5m at $0.20.

This explorer and development has its eye on the southern part of the Yarrol Geological Province in Queensland, where exploration to date has identified three project areas – the Mt Weary gold project, Rawlins gold-copper project, and the Monal gold project.

 

ASX SMALL CAP WINNERS:

Here are the best performing ASX small cap stocks for February 20th – 25th:

Swipe or scroll to reveal full table. Click headings to sort:

Wordpress Table Plugin

Big biggie shareholder Christopher Wallin earlier this week launched an all-cash takeover bid for gold-manganese explorer Carawine Resources (ASX:CWX) which values the explorer at 21c per share — a 27.27% premium to the last trading price.

Reuben reckons Wallin was the #41 richest person is Australia in 2020 (according to Forbes) with an estimated net wealth of about ~$910 million.

Affiliate marketing network platform  i-Synergy (ASX:IS3) has begun formulating an integration strategy following its recent proposed acquisition of POSTech, the company behind loyalty program app Rewalty.

IS3 is looking at ways to combine its own affiliate marketing platform VTRAK with Rewalty, with the goal of creating a foundation for one integrated marketplace.

ASX SMALL CAP LOSERS:

Here are the worst performing ASX small cap stocks for February 20th – 25th:

Swipe or scroll to reveal full table. Click headings to sort:

Wordpress Table Plugin

Just keeping an eye on the ol’ crew at Tyro Payments (ASX:TYR) where life is as volatile as the last few weeks of February 2022 – crazy days they were too. Tyro is up 11% as the tech sector performed a late resurgence, but it’s still down some 25% for the week. Cos that’s the kind of week we’re having.

Tyro shed a third of its value on Monday following a crap first-half.