Miners push ASX higher

Strong Chinese data and buoyancy in commodity's price has bumped up mining stocks.

Owen Raszkiewicz

Owen Raszkiewicz is a Motley Fool Contributor. Owen has been a Contributor since 2013, having also spent time as a Fool writer/analyst. He also worked as an Investment Analyst at Zenith Investment Partners, Australia's top research house specialising in managed funds. Owen has appeared on Channel 10's The Project and was invited on the BBC. He holds a Masters of Applied Finance, Masters of Financial Planning, Bachelor of Technology, Advanced Diploma of Financial Services and Diploma of Mortgage Broking Management. In addition, Owen has passed Level 1 of the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) Program. He has taken the Banking + Finance Oath (BFO). When he is not writing, Owen is Managing Director of Rask Finance, an Australian financial education company. You can email him: [email protected].

Published August 12, 2013 12:12 pm AEST

The S&P/ASX 200 (ASX: XJO) (^AXJO) has opened slightly stronger this morning despite an early sell-off of banking stocks, up 13 points to 5068. Early in trading, big miners are up. BHP (ASX: BHP) and Rio Tinto (ASX: RIO) have climbed 2.3% and 2.8% respectively. Pure play iron ore stock, Fortescue (ASX: FMG) is up 4.5%.

The resilience in the iron ore price of last week has given renewed optimism for short-term investors despite Rio's 71% profit decrease announced on Thursday. Chinese data out on Friday showed that iron ore imports grew substantially despite base metals rising in price.

The banks have given the market a mixed result with ANZ (ASX: ANZ) and Commonwealth Bank (ASX: CBA) above parity whilst others lag marginally. Insurance stocks QBE (ASX: QBE), Suncorp (ASX: SUN) and Insurance Australia Group (ASX: IAG) are down between 0.8% and 1%.

Despite Newcrest's (ASX: NCM) write-downs and $5.8 billion loss, the stock has rallied 4% higher. Conversely, retailer JB Hi-Fi (ASX: JBH) recorded a strong 11% profit increase for the full year and is up 2.7%.

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Motley Fool contributor Owen Raszkiewicz owns shares in ANZ.

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