The market may be in free fall today but that hasn't stopped some ASX mining shares from racing higher.
Let's take a look at four stocks that are avoiding the selloff and recording strong gains:
Arcadium Lithium (ASX: LTM)
The Arcadium Lithium share price is up 3.5% to $5.17. This follows a very strong gain for the lithium miner's NYSE listed shares overnight. They rose 12% on Wall Street after investors piled back into lithium stocks. It remains unclear why lithium stocks are suddenly rebounding but it could potentially be due to short sellers believing that they have now bottomed and are buying back shares to close their positions.
Encounter Resources Ltd (ASX: ENR)
The Encounter Resources share price is up almost 12% to 62.5 cents. This means that the mineral exploration company's shares are now up over 80% since this time last week. Investors have been buying its shares since announcing high-grade niobium intercepts at the Aileron project in West Arunta. The ASX mining share's managing director, Will Robinson, commented: "Aircore drilling is opening up new fronts of shallow niobium-REE carbonatite hosted mineralisation at Aileron. The aircore rig completed over 10,000m of drilling in its first month on site. This drilling has expanded the near surface footprint of the Crean, Hurley and Emily carbonatites."
Magnetic Resources NL (ASX: MAU)
The Magnetic Resources share price is up 4% to $1.07. This morning, this gold explorer released drilling results from the Laverton Project. According to the release, its drilling shows that the 400m northern part of the 750m long LJN4 deposit plunges to the south east and is much larger than previously estimated. It is also bigger than the southern silica pyrite and breccia zone. In addition, the company revealed that outstanding intersections continue with strong grades. The company said: "Interestingly, similarly to other world class multi- million-ounce deposits in the Laverton region, we have already identified 8 stacked lodes in the central part of LJN4. We have now completed a 717m hole below these stacked lodes and results are pending."
Sayona Mining Ltd (ASX: SYA)
The Sayona Mining share price is up 7% to 3.75 cents. Once again, this follows strong gains for lithium stocks on Wall Street overnight. It may be worth looking at short interest data in the coming days to see if short sellers have been closing out of their positions. As of Monday, this ASX mining share had short interest of 9.8%.
Editor's note: A previous version of this article misquoted the Sayona Mining share price as 37.5 cents instead of the correct 3.75 cents per share.
