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Stock-market investors might have wished for a better start to the second half of the year. As it is they've taken something of a battering, with the prospect of further volatility to come.
But the market has come a long way from its low point in March, with leading shares up around 17%.
Miners have underpinned much of that improvement, accounting for six of the 12 best performers. These are Kazakhmys, 7p cheaper at 639p, up 182% since the start of the year, Vedanta 18p lower at 1370p, (126%), Fresnillo, 7p off at 507p, (120%), and Eurasian Natural Resources, 3p firmer at 675.5p, (103%), along with Rio Tinto, unmoved on 2035p, (64%) and Antofagasta, 3½p off at 595p, (47.9%). Without them, most investors would be a lot poorer today.
Only Marks & Spencer, ¾p easier at 315p, up 46.7% on the six months, Autonomy, 5p cheaper at 1415p, (48%), oil services group Petrofac, down 9½p at 673½p, (96%), Barclays, 7.7p better at 296.7p, (89%), broker Icap, up 2¾p at 449¼p, (54%) and Old Mutual, 1.25p softer at 84.27p, (55.5%) came anywhere close to putting in a creditable performance.
Shares generally managed to recover their poise after yesterday's global sell-off on the back of some dismal US unemployment numbers. Blue-chips were a touch firmer for choice in thin trading with drugmaker Shire adding 21p at 843½p, and Intertek 18p at 1051p. The FTSE 100 index rose 20.09 to 4254.36. But without any lead from Wall Street, which was closed today to celebrate Independence Day, City investors proved reluctant to open fresh positions over the weekend.
After the success of the London end of Rio Tinto's £9.2 billion rights issue, the focus turned to Sydney overnight, where Australian investors had taken up 94.76% of the issue.
The rump of 7.87 million shares were placed with institutional shareholders at A$48.50, a 6.3% discount to the ruling price.
Rio's biggest shareholder Chinalco has already taken up its full rights entitlement, which has allowed the Chinese state-owned company to average out its initial investment for which it paid around 6000p a share. A move by Chinalco to invest $19.5 billion (£11.9 billion) into Rio was eventually abandoned in favour of a conventional rights issue.
But Rio plans to link with rival BHP Billiton, 5p cheaper at 1353p, to form an iron ore joint venture, despite the failure of BHP's bid last year.
Société Gé*érale has raised its rating on BHP from hold to buy and introduced the shares to its premium list. It has also jacked up its target from 1650p to 1900p as part of a review of the mining sector.
SocGen has a buy rating on bid target Anglo American, 10p dearer at 1735p, and has moved its target from 1800p to 2400p. Xstrata, 4.9p off at 659.5p, which has seen its first approach to Anglo rejected, is also rated a buy with the target increased from 800p to 1000p. Antofagasta is moved from sell to hold.
Next week will see a reweighting of Barclays as a constituent of the Footsie 100 index after the number of shares in issue increases by 1.33 billion to 11.01 billion following the conversion of its mandatory conversion notes. That will result in its weighting in the benchmark index being raised from 2.49% to 2.89%. MF Global calculates that index tracker funds will need to top up their holdings by an estimated £700 million worth of shares just to maintain their weighting.
Life assurer Friends Provident, up 1.91p at 63.4p, has been given the go-ahead by the courts to give its 52% majority stake in asset manager F&C Asset Management, 1p lighter at 65½p, to its own investors.
They will receive one F&C share of every Friends' share they already own. An attempt by Friends to sell the stake last year was thwarted by the banking crisis.
Jubilee Platinum, down 1½p at 44p, is buying the platinum and nickel producer Braemore Resources, down 1.4p at 3.15p.
The terms of the all-share offer are one new Jubilee for every 15.8 Braemore shares. Jubilee surged on Monday after announcing it was in talks.
City speculators took this to mean that it had either received a bid approach, or was looking to merge with someone else.
