The S&P-ASX 200 index ended the day slightly higher at 4774.6 points, up 0.3%, while the All Ordinaries also gained 0.3% to 4789.3 points.
On the mining front, gold was once again the big news of the day after hitting a fresh record high of $US1226.30 per ounce before cooling to $1221.27/oz by 4.30pm AEDT. Since the start of November, spot gold has soared almost 16% and in this week alone has increased 4%.
However, Australia-listed gold stocks on the Final Call watchlist didn’t revel in the price spike, instead hit by a round of profit-taking. Newcrest Mining dipped A7c to $39.19, Lihir Gold shed 5c to $3.68, Newmont Mining Corp fell 4c to $6.02, while Sino Gold Mining gained 3c to $8.41 and Kingsgate Consolidated added 8c to $10.20.
Mining heavyweights BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto ended today’s session mixed, despite an overnight jump in commodity prices on the London Metal Exchange.
BHP gained 55c to close at $42.47, while Rio dipped 3c to close at $73.51.
On the LME, copper for three-month delivery was trading $US10 higher today at $7130 per tonne. Nickel for three-month delivery closed 0.3% higher overnight at $16,300/t, zinc gained 2.5% to $2430/t while tin added 0.3% to $15,250/t.
"There's a lot of money coming into commodities because people are looking at the sector from a long-term point of view," an unnamed trader at a trading house in Shanghai told Dow Jones Newswires.
The trader added that investors were keen to own commodities on a longer-term basis and were ignoring rising LME copper and other base metal inventories.
"They ignore the stock situation,” he told the newswire. “The material coming into warehouses right now is probably going to be used next year.”
In other news, Swiss mining giant Xstrata has approved a $542 million underground mine and magnetite processing operation at its Ernest Henry copper mine in Queensland, extending the life of the mine through to at least 2024.
The decision follows a positive feasibility study into the underground mine and magnetite operation.
Australia’s third-largest iron ore miner, Fortescue Metals Group, gained A10c to close at $4.40, while OZ Minerals finished at $1.26, up 0.5c.
A big mover by percentage on the Final Call watchlist was Mantle Mining, which closed 2.4c, or 56%, higher at 6.7c after drilling at the Barkly project in the Northern Territory intersected high-grade phosphate rock.
Dragon Mining was the most traded stock today with some 94.6 million shares changing hands by the final bell.
