Welcome to HotCopper’s Market Close for Wednesday 9^th of April, I’m Jonathon Davidson.

Another day, another batch of tariff-driven panic selling. Unless you’re deep in energy stocks, in which case the move could be rational, seeing as Brent Crude hit a four year low. 

The energy sector, unsurprisingly, was the worst performer down -4%, while utilities managed to scrape through into the green – up a fifth of a percent. All other sectors were in the red as materials also got battered as iron ore prices head towards US$90/tn. 

At any rate – let’s turn to companies in the green. 

Red Sky Energy was in the green on Wednesday, albeit on very low volumes, as the company unveiled its maiden resource estimate for its energy landholding in the African nation of Angola. Shares ended up 20% at a sixth of a cent. 

In a similar fashion, Ionic Rare Earths jumped around 17% on Wednesday as the company highlighted it could stand to benefit from China’s latest export bans, this time, for heavy rare earths. Shares ended at a seventh of a cent.

Finally, proving nanocaps can sometimes benefit from being outside the realm of macroeconomic forces,  biotech minnow Osteopore jumped 87% as the company revealed the EU has awarded the company market approvals to sell its cranial implant products in the region. Shares ended at 3cps.

And as for companies in the red, there were a lot to choose from. 

BHP Group fell nearly -4% on Wednesday as iron ore prices on the Singapore exchange got uncomfortably close to US$90 dollars a tonne. That would mark the first real departure from the $100 range iron ore has seen in a while, and BHP wasn’t alone. Rio, Fortescue, and Mineral Resources were also battered. BHP closed just over $34 bucks.

Elsewhere, Woodside Energy fell just over -4% in tandem as Brent Crude prices hit 4 year lows of US$60 dollars per barrel. The latest Trade War has helped push Woodside’s 1Y returns down nearly -37%, a far cry from the bull run the stock saw during the COVID-era oil revival. Shares closed just above $19 each.

Finally, Deep Yellow fell -7.4% along with a basket of other uranium miners as the market starts to wonder what could be in store for the nuclear energy feedstock. In between the lines, with Trump ready to be more friendly to Russia, many are wondering the if the Biden-era ban on Russian uranium imports will hold. Deep Yellow ended at 78cps.

That’s HotCopper’s Market Close, I’m Jonathon Davidson, have a great night and we’ll see you on Thursday.