Good Afternoon and welcome to HotCopper‘s Market Close, I’m Jon Davidson. It was a strong start to the week at least, ahead of Anthony Albanese and Trump’s meeting in Washington taking place tonight and in the early hours of Tuesday, as the XJO climbed back above 9,000pts in a strong run led by the financials sector.
CBA jumped nearly +2% intraday, eyeing a run to $172/sh, bringing the market cap back towards $290B but still relatively well off June 2025 all time highs.
The Albo-Trump meeting will by far most likely be the big catalyst-maker to watch this week, for better or for worse. Last week was defined by a race to find which rare earths companies may benefit from a US-Australian critical minerals deal, given China’s move to further pull back rare earth exports last week. (China has since come out and accused Trump of making a ‘panic’ about that decision.)
All eyes will be on rare earths players with existing agreements in place, and or, those projects which Trump may or may not be briefed on when the two leaders meet.
To be sure, interesting times.
Looking at companies in the green:
Botanix lifted on Monday after revealing it’s grown revenues from US sales of its anti sweating drug Sofdra to $7M, but the stock price is still well off July levels when expectations for big money, fast, fell flat.
Orthocell meanwhile staged an increase intraday after it spent $1M to boost its stake in a WA-based company using pearl shell material to create a bone healing product to 12%.
Larvotto meanwhile increased on the back of a takeover offer from a US-based NYSE-listed antimony company, but even with the green day, investors were widely critical of the offer that valued the company at only $1.40 a share.
And what about the reds?
Deep Yellow wiped off nearly a fifth of its current value when it announced CEO John Borshoff would be resigning. Borshoff, who is 77, has long been at the helm; an outsized decline on Monday may be because the situation echoes the controversial Boss Energy debacle from earlier this year.
Meanwhile chip tech nanocap Nanoveu staged a decline on Monday after releasing slides from a presentation last Friday that clarified the company hadn’t yet tested its chips on live drones; and what drones the company is looking at are nanodrone models.
Finally, European Lithium staged a -30% drop on Monday after rocketing last week; while one month returns still sit at +250%, the catalyst appears to have been the company selling off a bunch of shares in a NASDAQ listed company that gave it $76M AUD.
That’s Market Close for Monday, I’m Jon Davidson, have a great night and we’ll see you tomorrow.