With copper a whisker away from a new high, oil heading up, gold hovering – but not falling – and other metals like aluminium and nickel also posting recoveries overnight, it should have been a good session for the mining sector.
But Wall Street and the Dow Jones Industrial Average posted more falls overnight, and the financial sector in Australia deteriorated further, so it was downhill all the way. The S&P/ASX 200 ended the session down 1.34% to 5446.4 points, while the All Ords fell 1.2% to 5515.5 points.
And this was despite the latest job data managing to be reassuring on both the economic front and the interest rate front.
Today’s labour report from the Australian Bureau of Statistics revealed employers created 14,800 new jobs in March, with the jobless rate up 0.1% for the month. Some 297,000 new jobs were created in the year to March – that’s good news for the potentially slowing economy.
In the other good news, wages growth slowed to 3.8% for the December quarter, down 0.1%, more evidence of a cooling economy, meaning the Reserve Bank of Australia is less likely to whack interest rates up again soon.
But back to the equity markets. The big miners mainly went sideways despite a promising start to the day, pulled down by all that market volatility from overseas.
Rio Tinto was down 14c to $137.74 by close of trade and BHP Billiton narrowly avoided a fall with a late recovery, sending its shares up a mere 9c to $42, despite all the talk of a China share raid and the metallurgical coal upside announced yesterday.
The mid-tier suffered as well – Newcrest shed 44c to $33.51, while Lihir Gold was down 3c to $3.30, and Zinifex and Oxiana both also posted losses of 18c to $9.80 and 12c to $3.21 respectively.
Struggling at the shallower end of the pool was Geopacific Resources, which posted the day’s largest fall on percentages, dipping 5c or 33% to 10c.
Also down was Tiger Resources, despite announcing it was cashed up to the tune of $32.5 million following a $22.7 million options issue. The copper-focused junior fell 6c to 48c.
There were some positive stories by the end of the day, however.
Golden West Resources was up 10c or over 8% to $1.30 after iron ore miner Portman bought up another chunk of its shares, bringing its total holding in the junior to 13.81%.
Western Metals finished the session with a 2c or 27% gain to 9.3c after announcing its acquisition of a historically prospective copper-zinc project in Wales.
Mawson West was also on the up after announcing solid copper grades from its Kapulo joint venture with Anvil Mining. The junior finished the day up 4.5c to 16c, a 39% rise.
Amongst the bigger stocks, Aquila Resources gained 38c to $11.44 on the back of no news.
Moly Mines also continued its three day run with a 36c jump to $2.86, a 14% rise. The company is still quite a way off last year’s highs, however, which saw its share price head north of $7.
Mincor Resources was also one of the more solid performers in the mid-tier, rising 13c to $3.04.
