Sector movers: Miners recover, but oil stocks continue to trade lower

Mining stocks largely recovered on Tuesday, but oil and gas stocks continued to trade lower.

Just before the closing bell, the FTSE 100 was trading down 11.55 points or 0.17% at 6,677.07, while the FTSE 250 was up 0.27% or 48 points at 17,718.11 as miners staged a recovery from Monday’s selloff.

Past the midway point in trading on the London Metal Exchange, three-month futures contract of primary aluminium (up 0.5%), copper (up 0.8%), lead (up 1.4%), nickel (up 0.8%), tin (up 0.9%) and zinc (up 1.1%) were all trading higher.

Unsurprisingly, BHP Billiton (up 2.20%), Rio Tinto (up 2.08%), Fresnillo (up 1.97%), Antofagasta (up 1.76%), Anglo American (up 1.60%) and Randgold Resources (up 1.06%) lead the sector recovery for the blue chips. Concurrently, Vedanta up 5.10% or 19.50 to 401.90p was the comeback performer among the sector midcaps.

However, the ongoing slump in the platinum market took its toll on Lonmin. Spot platinum shed $5.62 or 0.58% to $955.93 an ounce, with an oversupplied market and lacklustre macro-climate doing little to help reverse the slide sending Lonmin shares tumbling by 8.22% or 4.03p to 44.97p.

Small cap Griffin Mining (down 2.67%) was another casualty, after it posted a drop in first-half pre-tax profit despite rising revenue, as interest payable on Chinese loans and foreign exchange losses dented its results.

The company's pre-tax profit for the six months ended 30 June was $3.7m, down from $5.8m in the same period last year, although revenue grew to $35.2m from $33.2m.

While miners largely recovered, oil and gas stocks continued to trade lower with the Brent front month futures contract lurking on either side of $50 per barrel level; its lowest since January.

Blue chips BG Group (down 0.23%), BP (down 0.27%) and Royal Dutch Shell (‘a’ share down 0.08% / ‘b’ shares down 0.24%) were in all negative territory, along with a number of mid to small caps.