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Good Afternoon and welcome to the first HotCopper Market Close of 2026, here’s to hoping you had a relaxing and profitable Christmas break, I’m Jon Davidson. The ASX traded flat all day and well into the final half of arvo trades with the bourse hovering just above the 8,700 level – but a very late and brief Santa Rally appears to have paused for now.
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That could be because the world is waiting to see what the fallout of America’s incursion into Venezuela means for the Wall Street session, though, US futures and the oil price suggest the market mightn’t be too bothered. What a way to start the year.
Materials led the gainers in the second half of arvo trades up +1.3% followed by utilities, but every other sector in the red with IT leading laggards down just more than -2.5%.
Let’s turn to companies in the green.
SILEX Systems traded +10% higher intraday on no news but as apparent goodwill spread into the uranium sector with other ASX-listed peers also making the top gainer boards, despite what one might have expected to be a lacklustre day for energy after the US could have just picked up all of Venezuela’s oil supplies. One to watch.
Elsewhere, European Lithium still juicing like it’s December 2025, that stock was up just shy of +15% higher as Aussie traders still throw hope and optimism at cheap lithium stocks given increases in carbonate benchmarks clocked in Q4 of the last calendar year.
Finally, Lynas Rare Earths up over +6% in arvo trades as a green day for materials sees some rare earth stocks higher, presumably as investors try to gauge what lies ahead for that basket of critical minerals in 2026.
And as for the reds,
4DX Medical down over -10% on Monday as profit takers scalp last week’s $4.50-per-share price levels; the company was a beneficiary of a late-stage Santa Rally over the Christsmas period, but with no revenues and a $2B market cap, it could be time to get cautious.
Metallium Ltd meanwhile sold off even after inking a deal with Glencore to be supplied by the latter with e-scrap waste for its precious metals recovery tech; it could be that investors didn’t like the fact Glencore isn’t handing over too much scrap per-year.
Finally, another biotech darling, Lumos Diagnostics fell over -5% in the final leg of arvo trades down to 30cps flat, and that looked like profit-taking too – over the last year, LDX shares are up over an eye-catching +600%.
That’s Market Close for Monday of Week 2 of 2026, I’m Jon Davidson, have a great night and we’ll see you tomorrow. I have a feeling we’re in for another interesting year.
