Mining and oil stock pace gains

Commodity and oil stocks led gains in the market as investors waited on a key speech from US central bank chief Janet Yellen, with weakness in the US dollar contributing to further gains in energy and metals prices.

Although Yellen struck an optimistic note on the US economy in her remarks on Monday evening, from both her speech and others from her peers at the regional Fed banks of Atlanta and Boston, markets deduced that a June rate hike was now well and truly 'off the table', with the same likely also holding true for July.

"Overall, Dr. Yellen signalled that her core view is unchanged, but the "possibility" that the soft May payrolls indicate a deeper malaise, and the risk of “significant economic repercussions" if the UK votes for Brexit, mean that she could not signal a June hike. We continue to think Sep is more likely than July," Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Panthneon Macroeconomics said in a research note sent to clients.

As of 19:20 BST the Bloomberg commodity index was up by 0.94% to 87.96 and the US dollar spot index lower by 0.24% to 93.85.

In parallel, the DJ Stoxx 600´s gauge of Basic Resource shares was higher by 4.60% to 283.86.

Nevertheless, the price action in the comodities patch wasn´t all to do with weakness in the greenback.

Royal Dutch Shell confirmed that two of its pipelines in the Niger Delta fell afoul of bomb attacks last Friday morning, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Nigeria's crude oil output had been slashed from 1.8m barrels a day at the start of 2016 to about 1.0m b/d at present, the Journal reported, citing analysts at Piper Jaffray.

News that US officials were pushing their Chinese counterparts to curb the Asian´s country´s output of steel at the yearly two-day 'annual dialogue' between the two countries was also referenced by some traders as having contributed to a sharp rise in iron ore futures overnight.

Iron ore futures on the Dalian Commodity Exchange climbed 5.6% to close at 367 yuan a tonne.

Top performing sectors so far today
Mining 9,476.37 +6.14%
Oil Equipment, Services & Distribution 13,247.77 +3.71%
Industrial Metals & Mining 1,137.53 +3.49%
Industrial Engineering 8,324.04 +3.03%
Chemicals 11,170.00 +2.32%

Bottom performing sectors so far today
Food & Drug Retailers 2,620.84 -0.75%
Fixed Line Telecommunications 4,895.65 -0.46%
Food Producers & Processors 8,240.79 -0.29%
Household Goods & Home Construction 17,109.56 -0.28%
Real Estate Investment & Services 2,708.91 -0.11%