A strong performance by FMG in recent months has seen the company be added to the ASX 50 in S&P Dow Jones Indices’ March quarterly rebalance.

FMG also joined the ASX All Australian 50 index. Shares in the miner have risen by 150% over the past year due to an improvement in the iron ore price and the strengthening of the company’s balance sheet.

Gold miner Evolution Mining was admitted to the ASX 100 index, less than five years after its inception.

It comes after SNL Metals & Mining Research this month named Evolution as the world’s second lowest-cost gold producer in a list of global large and mid-cap players.

Fellow gold producer Silver Lake Resources joined the ASX 300, putting it a step closer to re-joining the ASX 200.

Services company Ausdrill joined the ASX 300 and All Ordinaries, a year after it was removed from the All Ords.

One-time ASX 100 member Atlas Iron was readmitted to the All Ords.

Gold producers Millennium Minerals, Alkane Resources, Pantoro, Rand Mining and Blackham Resources also joined the All Ords, as did developers Gascoyne Resources, West African Resources, Eastern Goldfields, and Cardinal Resources.

Lithium companies were also winners with new producer Neometals, as well as developers Altura Mining and Kidman Resources being added to the All Ords.

Robert Friedland-backed scandium developer Clean TeQ Holdings, whose shares have doubled since the start of the year, will be admitted to the All Ords.

Coal was also back in favour in the All Ords with Atrum Coal and Stanmore Coal joining the ranks.

Mineral sands producer Base Resources, copper play Finders Resources, Canada-focused Champion Iron and Angolan miner Lucapa Diamond Company also got a nod.

It was mixed fortunes for uranium companies, with Paladin Energy being removed from the ASX 300, while developer Berkeley Energia was admitted to the All Ords.

It wasn’t all good news, with producers Tiger Resources and Wolf Minerals, as well as explorer/developers Bougainville Copper, Dome Gold Mines, Coal of Africa, Newfield Resources and Toro Energy being removed from the All Ords.

RBC Capital Markets analyst Paul Hissey said this week that the worst was behind miners, and the fate of most is no longer dependent on commodity prices.

“Even more so, following a relatively short period of austerity (by historical standards) many now find themselves with unexpectedly higher prices coincident with low cost and capital plans, creating a cashflow divergence between generation and spend,” he said.

Hissey said the best returns would come from those companies with spending discretion, as well as opportunity, such as FMG, Rio Tinto, South32, Northern Star Resources, OZ Minerals and Regis Resources.

“The opportunity for proper value creation is most likely to come from those companies bold enough to commit to new investment, while higher dividend payments (or buybacks) may also provide a sugar hit, it is unlikely to lead to lasting stock re-ratings,” he said.

“While a decision to bunker down and ride out the storm may have seemed difficult last year, we think the greater challenges lay in choosing how to spend the unexpected windfall this year”.