Rise and Shine: Everything you need to know before the ASX opens

On Stockhead today,

Rob Badmanana’s look at what’s happening on the High Voltage battery metals market, a bunch of uranium stock picks from Tribeca’s Guy Keller, and Earlybird Eddy’s deep dive into how ASX biotech investors should read the 4C Report.

But first …

… welcome to 18 January – a date seared into the memories of all UFO-watchers and Space Alien Believers, as it was on this day in 1644 that a group of very confused people in the US city of Boston saw a UFO.

According to local Puritan and governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony John Winthrop’s diary: “About midnight, three men, coming in a boat to Boston, saw two lights arise out of the water near the north point of the town cove, in form like a man, and went at a small distance to the town, and so to the south point, and there vanished away.”

Riveting stuff, no doubt – but what makes this remarkable is that it’s not the first mention of UFO’s in Winthrop’s diary. The first mention of UFO sightings over Boston came several year earlier, with a much lengthier description which is fascinating because the poor, flummoxed yokels who saw it had close to zero chance of describing it without sounding like total lunatics.

Winthrop wrote at the time that a chap called James Everell, who he describes as “a sober, discreet man” – translation, not a drunkard like the rest of Boston at the time – and two other guys were rowing along the Muddy River swamplands, then “they saw a great light in the night sky”.

“When it stood still, it flamed up, and was about three yards square,” Winthrop writes, “when it ran, it was contracted into the figure of a swine.”

It wasn’t until a third mysterious apparition took to the skies that Winthrop managed to come up with an explanation – which doesn’t hold a lot of water, considering that the first looked like a man, and the second took the form of an airborne, burning pig.

The last of them, however, added a far more sinister portion to the tales of lights in the sky over Boston – a loud, unearthly voice commanding “Boy! Boy! Come away! Come away!” that Winthrop claims was heard by a number of very sober people.

Thus, Boston’s proto-Mulder decided that he knew what was up, and discounted any thought that they might be spaceships or aliens or a very early start to the CIA’s MK-Ultra program.

The very idea of a spacecraft would obviously have been a completely (forgive me) alien concept for the mid-1600s Puritans… especially since the Ancient Egyptians were still holding up their end of the NDA they signed to get the pyramids built on time, and those wily South Americans had moved on from worshipping ET to far more sedate ways to honour the gods, cheerfully murdering children by the basketload to ensure the corn would grow.

Instead, Winthrop mustered all his available intelligence and seized upon recent events, specifically a rather tragic occurrence during which a sailor had mistakenly set fire to quite a lot of gunpowder on board a vessel, captained by John Chaddock, breaking the boat and its crew down to their constituent molecules in a very short length of time.

So the answer was blindingly obvious – there were no aliens or spaceships harassing Boston… it was just a bunch of ghosts. Case closed.

There’s a danger in leaping to conclusions, as Winthrop has quite nicely illustrated (because it’s painfully obvious to anyone with even half a brain that they were, clearly, alien spaceships on the hunt for some fresh Puritan anuses to probe).

To help you not leap to erroneous conclusions, the Stockhead team has been hard at work making logical reason out of the innumerable waves of data and noise that spew forth from the ASX on a daily basis.

COMMODITY/FOREX/CRYPTO MARKET PRICES

Gold: US$2,020.78 (-0.38%)

Silver: US$22.79 (-1.13%)

Nickel (3mth): US$15,880.00/t (-0.51%)

Copper (3mth): US$8,267.85/t (-0.20%)

Oil (WTI): US$71.81 (-0.14%)

Oil (Brent): US$77.72 (+0.23%)

Iron 62pc Fe: US$137.22/t (-1.19%)

AUD/USD: 0.6560 (-0.45%)

Bitcoin: US$42,760.70 (-0.86%)

WHAT GOT YOU TALKING YESTERDAY?

Eddy’s health wrap had a lot of folks talking yesterday, and it wasn’t just because of that photo of a guy who is clearly elated just to still be alive, despite clearly being more than 900 years old.

In #ASX #health #stocks news:

Imugene jumps on positive study results
Amplia doses Phase 2a trial 1st patient@ImugeneLimited ($IMU) @ampliatx ($ATX) https://t.co/F9dkZtNo6e

— Stockhead (@StockheadAU) January 17, 2024

YESTERDAY’S ASX SMALL CAP LEADERS

Here are the best performing ASX small cap stocks:

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

Code Company Price % Volume Market Cap MRD Mount Ridley Mines 0.002 100% 8,487,888 $7,784,883 FTC Fintech Chain Ltd 0.009 50% 7,769 $3,904,618 JAV Javelin Minerals Ltd 0.0015 50% 9,676,290 $1,633,729 KEY KEY Petroleum 0.0015 50% 3,563,007 $2,262,928 MCT Metalicity Limited 0.003 50% 364,999 $8,970,108 PIM Pinnacle Minerals 0.17 42% 2,150,661 $4,159,574 SPQ Superior Resources 0.015 25% 3,976,081 $24,014,645 ESR Estrella Res Ltd 0.005 25% 1,751,658 $7,037,487 NRX Noronex Limited 0.011 22% 1,564,069 $3,404,716 ASN Anson Resources Ltd 0.12 21% 4,346,714 $127,288,178 BFC Beston Global Ltd 0.012 20% 814,725 $19,970,469 HOR Horseshoe Metals Ltd 0.006 20% 216,670 $3,232,393 IEC Intra Energy Corp 0.003 20% 9,179,921 $4,151,954 RIL Redivium Limited 0.006 20% 2,295,429 $13,654,274 TML Timah Resources Ltd 0.031 19% 5,715 $2,307,754 FIN FIN Resources Ltd 0.019 19% 1,369,161 $10,388,299 MAN Mandrake Res Ltd 0.045 18% 4,705,858 $23,398,877 KOB Koba Resources 0.099 18% 370,234 $8,855,000 NIM Nimy Resources 0.1 18% 390,739 $11,850,440 DVL Dorsavi Ltd 0.014 17% 26,475 $7,159,939 LIS Lisenergy Ltd 0.1575 17% 408,640 $86,427,031 MOM Moab Minerals Ltd 0.007 17% 2,011,300 $4,271,781 PRX Prodigy Gold NL 0.007 17% 12,561 $10,506,647 TMK TMK Energy Limited 0.007 17% 12,813,133 $36,735,476 R3D R3D Resources Ltd 0.044 16% 111,033 $5,790,120

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Alicanto Minerals (ASX:AQI) dominated the ladder early on Wednesday, spiking a Benaud-esque 22.22%, most likely off the back of yesterday’s announcement that the company’s Big Swede – the Skyttgruvan-Naverberg project, which lies alongside the fearsome 1,000-year-old Falun mine – is getting bigger every time the company starts poking around.

Mandrake Resources (ASX:MAN) took off at a gallop this morning, running helter skelter for 45 minutes until the ASX tugged on the handbrake and brought the party to a close – leaving Mandrake dangling at +18.4% for the morning, on a sharp increase in volume.

We’re talking roughly 7.5x the four-week average, and without a skerrick of news to the ASX as to why. There will no doubt be an explanation of sorts on the way, but at the time of writing, it remains a mystery for Scoob and the gang to unravel.

Mandrake’s trading pause was upgraded to a trading halt shortly before midday – still no explanation forthcoming. We’ll keep you posted.

Basin Energy (ASX:BSN) has timed the start of its 2024 exploration program very nicely indeed, capitalising nicely on yellowcakes high-vis on the market at the moment with news that field work has now commenced for Basin’s winter program across the entirety of the company’s Athabasca uranium projects.

That encompasses high-resolution ground Stepwise Moving Loop Time-Domain Electromagnetic survey work underway at the North Millennium and Marshall projects, while final preparations are being made for phase 2 drilling at the Geikie project.

Likewise, Pinnacle Minerals (ASX:PIM) has a timely announcement out this morning, providing an update on its Uranium-REE Wirrulla Project in South Australia.

Pinnacle is reporting that recent satellite and radar imagery analysis at Wirrulla has highlighted uranium (U3O8) mineralisation potential and defined a number of priority target areas.

Additionally, exploration has found uranium mineralisation in place, with intercepts including 3,550ppm U3O8 over 1m from 66m in hole IR1377, and 1,400ppm U3O8 over 1m from 69m in hole IR1378.

Later in the day, Biome Australia (ASX:BIO) kicked into second gear for another stab at some gains on yesterday’s announcement that it’s pushing into the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland with its first allocation of Activated Probiotics hitting pharmacies and other retailers in those regions.

YESTERDAY’S ASX SMALL CAP LAGGARDS

Here are the worst performing ASX small cap stocks:

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

Code Company Price % Volume Market Cap AD1 AD1 Holdings Limited 0.005 -29% 2,002,141 $6,290,539 AMM Armada Metals 0.023 -26% 100,000 $6,448,000 FAU First Au Ltd 0.003 -25% 3,300,000 $6,647,973 ASV Assetvisonco 0.008 -20% 120,000 $7,258,366 HTA Hutchison 0.033 -20% 69,481 $556,472,852 FRS Forrestania Resources 0.03 -17% 2,151,509 $5,824,287 WCN White Cliff Minerals 0.015 -17% 35,768,081 $22,983,468 AMD Arrow Minerals 0.005 -17% 21,989,151 $20,842,591 CT1 Constellation Tech 0.0025 -17% 513,066 $4,424,201 RDS Redstone Resources 0.005 -17% 1,996,969 $5,528,271 EVN Evolution Mining Ltd 3.145 -16% 42,933,809 $7,408,149,488 WML Woomera Mining Ltd 0.018 -14% 10,292,064 $25,580,919 ECT Env Clean Tech Ltd. 0.006 -14% 1,211,156 $20,050,173 OPN Oppenneg 0.006 -14% 742,537 $7,904,257 RMX Red Mount Min Ltd 0.003 -14% 646,250 $9,357,516 TX3 Trinex Minerals Ltd 0.006 -14% 311,000 $10,409,173 CMX Chemx Materials 0.073 -14% 40,000 $4,524,767 N1H N1 Holdings Ltd 0.155 -14% 12,836 $15,850,003 DNA Donaco International 0.032 -14% 2,296,716 $45,709,407 CXU Cauldron Energy Ltd 0.045 -13% 12,699,561 $58,907,632 BPM BPM Minerals 0.065 -13% 73,208 $5,034,166 VBS Vectus Biosystems 0.26 -13% 10,415 $15,962,808 NIS Nickelsearch 0.047 -13% 4,861,352 $11,531,292 AUK Aumake Limited 0.0035 -13% 2,778,756 $7,657,627

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