Wall Street was down another 0.5% overnight, after the previous day’s 2% fall. European markets were again hammered on fears of the Greek crisis spreading, with the FTSE 100 down another 1.28%, and commodity prices copping another shellacking on the London Metal Exchange.
Cash nickel closed down 12% overnight, at $US22,560 per tonne, after losing 6.28% the previous day. Copper also closed down 0.96% to $6921.75 after falling 5.51% the day before, and lead took another belting, down 5.94% to $1908, on top of its 7.91% loss the previous day.
That flowed directly through to the Australian market, with the All Ordinaries down 1.99% at the close of trading and the S&P-ASX 200 down 2.16%. Financial stocks bore the brunt of the Greek wrecking ball again, with the S&P ASX 200 financials index down 3.34% for the day.
But mining stocks didn’t escape unscathed today. The S&P-ASX 200 metals and mining index dropped 2.05%, and many of the metals majors were carried down by the commodity price carnage.
BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto were both hit hard, down $1.14 to $37.60 and $3.79 to $65.69 respectively. OZ Minerals had another bad day, off 3.5c to $1.035 at the close of trading.
Fortescue Metals Group also closed down 10c to $4.21, with Coal of Africa and Murchison Metals the worst hit of the big caps, down 19c to $2.03 and 15.5c to $1.945 respectively.
There were some bright spots amid the bloodbath, however, with the current merger and acquisition plays at the top end of the market all doing well. Newcrest rose 64c to $31.02 and Lihir gained 11c to $3.86; MacArthur Coal gained 49c to $14.16 and Atlas put on 4c to $2.31. Atlas’s merger target Aurox also gained, up 0.5c to 74c.
Gold companies did relatively well across the board, with the S&P ASX gold index up 1.78% to 5773.1 at the close of trading and spot gold at $US1174.5 near the close of trading.
Allied Gold finished up 2.5c to 36.5c, with Adamus up 1.5c to 44c and Silver Lake up 3c to $1.15. Intrepid Mines, which this morning announced its WA gold mine will be sold to Northern Star Resources, finished up 1c to 39.5.
And Northern Star itself was one of the star performers across the market today, up 1.3c to 5.8c on the news and trading as high as 11c at one stage this morning.
