Stockhead here to help you ride next wave in exciting sea of ‘small caps’

They call them ‘small caps’ but many of them are big deals. And now Stockhead is here to take you into the dynamic world outside the ASX200.

We’d like to say riding the wave of ASX small caps is swell. But that would just be corny. Picture: Dylan Coker

Welcome to Stockhead – where seagulls dare.

We faced a dilemma in the Stockhead office a few months back.

For various reasons, but mainly because we could, we thought we might start servicing readers with an interest in ASX25 stocks.

Yes, our remit was “small caps”. But we had also just seen a big chunk of fresh retail investors pile into the ASX via a heady combination of “stimmie” cheques, an outbreak of trading platforms and general boredom.

It stood to reason that once the early buzz of picking the odd small-cap moonshot wore off, at least a few of those new players (about 400,000 during the first year of Covid on CommSec alone) might get the hang of this lark, calm down, and look around a bit.

They’d notice there were less mercurial, but far more steady returns to be made investing in businesses that had been good at making money since a time when the word “Vulcan” meant something logical.

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Anyway, we went to work doing our thing, scouring the reams of ASX announcements every morning for news and clues about ASX25 stocks whose turn today it was to moon, pump, dump, crash, soar, change games and water eyes.

It quickly became clear that the bourse’s biggest players rarely felt the need to convince Millennials and memestonk fans to pump their tyres.

How … boring. But let’s be honest – the words “lack of innovation” are reserved and used almost exclusively in regard to our most successful companies.

Nothing wrong with that though. Something about “if it ain’t broke” …

Good copy, however, for a dynamic newsflow on Australia’s freshest, most informative ASX news website, it does not make. Certainly not good TikToks and Facetweets.

While the big end of town stays mostly silent, only emerging with updates for their shareholders on how many trillions this round of dividends will be worth, the small caps jostle and shout for attention, every morning.

So with apologies to our SEO genius – who knew traffic salvation one thousand per cent lay in using more keyphrases with CBA, CSL, TLS and BHP in them – we quickly decided, nah.

Clicks are easy. (Twiggy Forrest underboob, anyone?)

You didn’t really think you’d be seeing THAT kind of Andrew ‘Twiggy’ Forrest picture, did you?

Chasing them at the expense of ignoring a big whack of Australia’s bravest entrepreneurs, explorers, developers and innovators is downright criminal.

There are currently roughly 1600 ASX stocks with a market cap of $500 million or less. I could almost guarantee you’ve heard of none of them. Okay, maybe some of the current Belle de Jours in the junior lithium space. And Nuix.

Did you know sand is becoming such a critical resource it’s a target for organised crime? There’s metal inside your neighbour’s car more valuable than gold?

Or that boron, the stuff that makes your smartphone glass stronger, can also help plants fight climate change?

Dozens of ASX small cap explorers do, and to get the money to explore further, experiment and yes, pay those executive salaries, they need you.

Specifically, your money. And to get it, they detail their every money-making move in the daily leaflet drop that floods the ASX’s announcements page.

These are not just penny dreadfuls.

They are the companies driving the next wave of innovation, economic growth, societal progress and shareholder wealth.

We think that’s worth writing about. In fact, it’s in our manifesto. So all of Stockhead’s journalists are specialists in their field, from lithium to cannabis to infant formula, CryptoPunks and ETFs.

They spend their days wading the chaotic ASX paddling pool so you don’t have to, searching for talent, deflecting the cannonballs and avoiding the odd floatie.

You’ll see the dedicated early risers in our daily pre-market and early movers update or the quick “out of the blocks” ones as we wrap for lunch.

Plus, you’ll get the chance to go a bit deeper with us as the investing themes of the day, week and month emerge.

And because too much expertise is never enough, we’ll call on some of Australia’s best analysts, presenters, columnists and even a rheumy-eyed stockbroking legend banging on every week about his sepia-toned London trading floor days.

Yes, some of them even pay us to give them a shoutout. They’re the ones you’ll see labelled on Stockhead as “Special Report”.

It’s how the rest of our service to you survives and has thrived, expanding from a team of three bloggers in 2016 to now gracing a small, but crucial part of Australia’s premier national daily newspaper.

We’re very proud to be launching this partnership, and the opportunity it represents for helping the thousands of innovators and characters at the crowded end of our national stock exchange be heard above the noise.

Let the whales cruise silently in the depths; we’ll take the waterpark action any day.

Welcome to Stockhead. And thanks for being a Stockhead.

Peter Farquhar Editor

A journalist since news was printed on paper, Peter switched to digital in 2007, joining a fledgling news.com.au. He has since specialised mainly in tech, news and business. He came to Stockhead in 2019 after five years at Business Insider Australia. He also manages an apple orchard in Tasmania, mainly for the cider benefits.

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