The Australian bourse today climbed to a fresh seven-month high with the S&P-ASX 200 index hitting 4053 points, up 0.7%, early in the session before closing at 4047.2 points, up 0.6%, while the All Ordinaries gained 0.8% to close at 4047.3 points.
Labour force figures released today showed the unemployment rate was a seasonally adjusted 5.7% in May, compared with an upwardly revised 5.5% in April.
“The employment figures are not a terrible result, and we're back to where we were in March,” Austock Securities senior client adviser Michael Heffernan told AAP.
“If anything, they will push the market higher.”
The biggest gains came from the mining sector today, in particular from iron ore stocks.
Australia’s third-largest iron ore producer FMG had a cracking day on the bourse, soaring 23% to $4.41, an eight-month high, before cooling to $4.35, up 21%.
The price jump saw FMG receive a “please explain” from the Australian Securities Exchange.
The iron ore play responded by saying it had no knowledge over what might have caused its share price to spike.
However, speculation has been swirling that China may be sizing up the iron ore play as a potential takeover target in the wake of collapsed Rio Tinto-Chinalco tie-up.
BHP Billiton added 1.5% to $38.27, while Rio Tinto soared 5.5% to $77.05.
Meantime, China Minmetals’ $US1.39 billion bid for the bulk of OZ Minerals assets received OZ shareholder approval at the company’s annual general meeting, held this morning.
In a statement, OZ announced that of the total 1.4 billion votes cast, more than 1.3 billion, or 93%, of votes approved the bid, compared to 107 million votes against, while 11.9 million abstained.
Today’s approval gives Minmetals the go-ahead to purchase almost all of OZ’s assets, including the Sepon copper and gold mine in Laos, the Golden Grove copper and zinc operation in Western Australia, the massive Century zinc mine in Queensland, and the Rosebery zinc and suspended Avebury nickel projects in Tasmania.
OZ will retain the Prominent Hill copper-gold mine in South Australia.
On the London Metal Exchange, copper for three-month delivery remained unchanged at $US5170 per tonne, nickel slipped 0.5% to $14,925/t and zinc gained 1.25% to $1625/t.
Spot gold was trading at $956.40 an ounce, up 0.3%, at 3:55pm AEST.
Newcrest Mining closed 0.6% higher at $A32, Lihir Gold fell 2% to $2.99 and Sino Gold Mining fell 0.17% to $5.97.
Big movers on the bourse today included emerging iron ore junior Iron Ore Holdings, which jumped to an intraday high of 85c, up 23% , after announcing further high-grade iron ore intersections from its Iron Valley direct shipping ore project in Western Australia’s Pilbara region.
Shares in Iron Ore Holdings closed at 83.5c.
