Wednesday’s HotCopper trends: Opthea, Northern Star, Dreadnought, and other daily topics

With more than 600,000 average monthly users on the HotCopper forums, each and every discussion can move markets. That’s why getting in front of those red-hot trends is key for every trader worth their salt. In this daily HotCopper Trends column, we break down the top Oz stocks through each trading day.

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Opthea (ASX:OPT) was smashed on its return to the ASX, plunging more than -96% after it announced results of a strategic review and new candidate plans. The biotech stock was emerging after a long suspension following the disappointment of its late-stage clinical trials for its wet AMD eye drug.

The Australian company has revealed plans to advance its OPT-302 candidate for LAM, a rare pulmonary disease with significant unmet medical need.

“We believe this provides a highly capital-efficient pathway into an area of significant unmet medical need,” EC, Dr Jeremy Levin, explained today.

“LAM is a debilitating rare disease with limited treatment innovation and no approved therapies directly targeting aberrant VEGF-C and VEGF-D signalling, biological pathways strongly associated with disease progression.”

OPT was down as much as -96.9%, to 1.9¢ at lunchtime today.

Also popular was Northern Star (ASX:NST), after it unveiled a 26% group mineral resources increase to 88.9 million ounces. The ore reserves increase to 28.4Moz, which has strengthened the gold miner’s high-quality growth.

The explorer’s managing director, Stuart Tonkin, this morning said the results highlight Northern Star’s commitment to exploration investment, which continues to drive strong organic and inorganic growth across our expanding portfolio year-on-year and deliver long-term returns for shareholders.

NST has been up +4.63% to $22.04.

Another miner that was popular with HotCopper forum users through Wednesday was Dreadnought Resources (ASX:DRE) after it confirmed a gold discovery at the historic Metzke’s Find deposit in Western Australia.

Drilling identified an offset extension at the Metzke’s North discovery, with 150m of strike, which remains open. Company managing director Dean Tuck declared that Dreadnought’s extension drilling program continues to deliver significant gold intercepts outside the current resource at Metske’s Find.

“While it is still early days, we now have a handle on Metzke’s North to guide our future activities and to define a resource,” he explained.

DRE was down -3.03%, to 1.6¢ at the time of writing.

Looking wider, the S&P/ASX 200 gained 14.30 points, to 8,738 today.

That’s Wednesday’s HotCopper Trends, I’m Colin Sandell-Hay. See you for close.

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