The market remained in negative territory from the opening bell after a plethora of less than impressive economic data including worse-than-expected US real estate, Chinese manufacturing and European services and manufacturing data.

In addition, Prime Minister Julia Gillard added some political uncertainty to the mix by calling a party leadership ballot for Monday after Kevin Rudd resigned as foreign minister yesterday.

At the closing bell, the S&P/ASX 200 index was 6.9 points lower at 4286.2 points while the All Ordinaries dipped 4.6 points to 4367.5 points.

On the mining front, only a handful of major resource stocks made any ground on the Final Call watchlist in today’s trade.

Uranium miner Paladin Energy led the gains on the watchlist, climbing 13.5c to $1.88, while a number of gold miners also made ground today, with Newcrest Mining up 25c to $36.10, Eldorado Gold Corporation up 20c to $13.88 and Medusa Mining up 2c to $6.34.

Mining goliath BHP Billiton finished the session 18c lower at $36.23 after announcing it would temporarily suspend its TEMCO manganese alloy smelter in Tasmania due to low manganese prices, as the long-term viability of the operation remains uncertain.

Rio Tinto also suffered on the bourse, dipping $1.02 to close at $67.51.

Rare earths play Lynas Corporation also took a hit, finishing the session 4.5c lower at $1.245 after it was served with court proceedings regarding its rare earths plant in Malaysia from a group of individuals who are seeking to overturn the recent granting of a temporary operating licence for the plant.

However there was a ray of sunshine on an otherwise dismal day. Shares in Blackthorn Resources skyrocketed to a high of $1.12 before cooling to $1.025, up 31.5c, at the closing bell after reporting the best copper intersection to date from the Kitumba resource area at its Mumbwa project in Zambia.

The company reported one intersection from phase five exploration drilling at the project of 231m at 4.49% copper between 201m and 432m including 17m at 14.88% copper between 211m and 228m.

Commodities on the London Metal Exchange didn’t fare too well in today’s trading on jitters over slowing global economic growth on the back of the gloomy economic data.

Copper for three month delivery fell 0.3% to $US8413.75 per tonne, nickel dipped 0.2% to $20,070/t while zinc shed 0.9% to $2049/t.

Meanwhile, spot gold was trading $2.51 lower at $1773.95 an ounce at 4:41pm AEDT.



“You’ve got losses in other markets so you’ve probably got investors selling gold to offset those losses,” National Australia Bank economist Alexandra Knight told Bloomberg.



“We’re seeing a bit of a resistance point; we’re not seeing prices go back to the levels we saw in September.”

The Australian dollar was last trading at $1.0647 at 4:40pm AEDT.

– with Bloomberg