A bunch of small cap resources plays made colossal gains over the month of September. Here’s some of the highlights.

 

COMMODITY FOCUS

In September, nickel continued to ‘flip the bird’ at negative macro sentiment.

Nickel’s monstrous bull run — which caught everyone by surprise — saw prices peak at an incredible $US18,620/t during the month. Remember, nickel was selling for $US10,430/t at the start of the year. Crazy stuff.

>>Scroll to the end for September’s Top 50 resources performers

Gold spent much of September treading water. But with macro clouds  like Brexit, trade wars, Hong Kong riots, and recessions threatening, gold’s safe haven status saw it bound above $US1500/oz at month’s end.

Silver’s performance shadowed gold, peaking in early September at its highest price since 2016, before softening and then bouncing back right at the close.

Lithium prices continued to soften, but cobalt had a great month — hydroxide, sulphate and metal prices were up 20.9 per cent, 23.2 per cent and 17.3 per cent respectively, according to Benchmark Minerals Intelligence data.

The fundamentally bullish outlook for copper hasn’t changed for quite a while, but pundits call it ‘Doctor Copper’ because its performance correlates with the health of the global economy.

Which means that unlike gold, copper — which briefly fell to year-lows of ~US$5500/t — isn’t a strong performer when s&*t hits the fan.

So, it’s interesting that copper-facing explorers were among our top performers this month. In August 13.5 per cent of top movers had copper exposure; in September, that had increased to 19.7 per cent.

Silver and nickel explorers also made big gains, while gold had to settle with a smaller piece of the pie.

TOP STOCKS: SEPTEMBER

Two main patterns defined September’s winner’s column — big discoveries and company changing mergers and acquisitions. Let’s start with the discoveries.

Stavely, Alkane and the benefits of ‘nearology’

In late September, our #1 mover Stavely Minerals (ASX: SVY) made a huge copper discovery at its namesake Victorian project.

Drilling assay results from the Thursday’s Gossan prospect revealed a monstrous shallow, very high-grade intersection — which included a ‘stunning’ 2m intersection grading 40 per cent copper, 3g/t gold and 517g/t silver. Insane stuff.

The market’s verdict? The explorer leapt ~330 per cent to $1 per share. But neighbouring explorer Navarre Minerals (ASX:NML) also benefitted from the find with a 36 per cent uplift.

Earlier in the month, Alkane (ASX:ALK) discovered something very, very big at its Northern Molong porphyry project (NMPP) in NSW. The stock went for a run and finished the month up about 78 per cent.

And once again, the neighbours benefited.

Magmatic Resources (ASX:MAG), which has ground encircling Alkane’s Boda discovery, was up 183 per cent for month.

Alice Queen (ASX:AQX) is just 700m away and received a very nice 137 per cent bump — mostly when it told investors that there was a good chance that Alkane’s mineralisation extended into their ground.

Hi neighbour.

… And then there’s the big M&A

Mergers and acquisitions are a dependable way to inject life back into a sluggish small cap.

Last month, advanced Ghanaian gold explorer Azumah Mining (ASX:AZM) was hit with a hostile takeover bid from WA gold project joint venture partner, mining fund Ibaera Capital.

The 2.8c per share offer represented a big premium to Azumah’s historical share price — 100 per cent on the last closing price of 1.4c, and 48 per cent on the 12-month volume weighted average price of 1.9c per share.

In response, Azumah leapt 93 per cent for the month.

A number of our top 50 also jumped on project acquisitions (or potential acquisitions), including Sagon Resources (ASX:SG1) +80 per cent, Red Mountain Mining (ASX:RMX) +40 per cent, Hipo Resources (ASX:HIP) +62.5 per cent and Aldoro Resources (ASX:ARN) +28.5 per cent.

Here’s the top 50 mining small caps for the month of September>>>

Scroll or swipe to reveal table. Click headings to sort. Best viewed on a laptop

CODE NAME PRICE 1 SEP PRICE 30 SEP TOTAL RETURN % MARKET CAP
SVY STAVELY MINERALS 0.225 0.970 331.11 177.76M
MAG MAGMATIC RESOURCES 0.018 0.051 183.33 5.98M
AQX ALICE QUEEN 0.016 0.038 137.5 29.41M
OAU ORA GOLD 0.010 0.022 120 14.21M
EPM ECLIPSE METALS 0.001 0.002 100 2.30M
CLZ CLASSIC MINERALS 0.002 0.004 100 19.58M
DTM DART MINING 0.004 0.008 100 8.14M
AZI ALTA ZINC 0.002 0.005 100 9.15M
MTB MOUNT BURGESS MINING 0.002 0.004 100 2.08M
VAR VARISCAN MINES 0.001 0.002 100 3.12M
AZM AZUMAH RESOURCES 0.015 0.029 93.33 28.38M
OAR OAKDALE RESOURCES 0.009 0.017 88.89 8.30M
LMG LATROBE MAGNESIUM 0.006 0.011 83.33 14.26M
SG1 SAGON RESOURCES 0.030 0.054 80 15.71M
ALK ALKANE RESOURCES 0.410 0.730 78.05 369.45M
CCZ CASTILLO COPPER 0.012 0.021 75 14.20M
AAR ANGLO AUSTRALIAN RESOURCES 0.063 0.110 74.6 41.05M
HIP HIPO RESOURCES 0.008 0.013 62.5 5.02M
PKO PEAKO 0.016 0.026 62.5 3.00M
CWX CARAWINE RESOURCES 0.140 0.225 60.71 15.70M
CTM CENTAURUS METALS 0.010 0.016 60 54.13M
EUC EUROPEAN COBALT 0.021 0.033 57.14 25.14M
HCH HOT CHILI 0.029 0.045 55.17 73.65M
AZS AZURE MINERALS 0.150 0.230 53.33 31.87M
PDZ PRAIRIE MINING 0.220 0.330 50 70.05M
TNR TORIAN RESOURCES 0.011 0.016 45.45 5.05M
DRE DREADNOUGHT RESOURCES 0.005 0.008 45.45 11.73M
SRN SUREFIRE RESOURCES 0.009 0.013 44.44 6.54M
A4N ALPHA HPA 0.125 0.180 44 108.38M
SAU SOUTHERN GOLD 0.175 0.250 42.86 20.90M
LSR LODESTAR MINERALS 0.007 0.010 42.86 7.49M
POS POSEIDON NICKEL 0.038 0.054 42.11 142.71M
INR IONEER 0.155 0.220 41.94 324.50M
AUT AUTECO MINERALS 0.005 0.007 40 7.02M
RMX RED MOUNTAIN MINING 0.005 0.007 40 5.45M
TAO TAO COMMODITIES 0.100 0.140 40 4.34M
NML NAVARRE MINERALS 0.068 0.093 36.76 40.46M
ARV ARTEMIS RESOURCES 0.028 0.038 35.71 28.48M
MXR MAXIMUS RESOURCES 0.059 0.080 35.59 2.79M
GLN GALAN LITHIUM 0.170 0.230 35.29 32.30M
CHK COHIBA MINERALS 0.012 0.016 33.33 10.63M
DAF DISCOVERY AFRICA 0.015 0.020 33.33 3.64M
CGN CRATER GOLD MINING 0.015 0.020 33.33 24.55M
MAU MAGNETIC RESOURCES 0.385 0.500 29.87 101.01M
DKM DUKETON MINING 0.170 0.220 29.41 25.98M
AXE ARCHER EXPLORATION 0.120 0.155 29.17 30.55M
ARN ALDORO RESOURCES 0.140 0.180 28.57 7.07M
RMI RESOURCE MINING 0.007 0.009 28.57 2.67M
IDA INDIANA RESOURCES 0.022 0.028 27.27 4.14M
MGU MAGNUM MINING AND EXPLORATION 0.055 0.070 27.27 21.31M
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