Big miners save the not so terrific day

Investors sang the praises of the major resource stocks yet again after they helped propel the sharemarket into positive territory despite a sluggish day.
After falling sharply on Monday due largely to a major sell-off in America, the ASX 200 index closed up 12.7 points at 4824.8 yesterday - within 41.3 points of its record high on January 17. The broader All Ordinaries index rose 13.2 points to 4779.8.
CMC Markets senior dealer James Foulsham said the market had lacked direction yesterday, but the big resource companies helped spark a late rally to send the bourse into the black.
"It was a day of consolidation after the volatile trading over the last few days. The market was up 12 points but a lot of it was due to BHP and Rio," Mr Foulsham said.
"People are definitely preferring the big resource stocks to the banks."
An increase in some base metal prices, notably those for copper and zinc, gave the miners a boost.
BHP Billiton jumped 37c to a new high of $24.84 and Rio Tinto rose $1 to a record $74.25.
But the bullishness failed to rub off on some of the minor miners, which are becoming more volatile as investors decide to take profits ahead of the reporting season next month.
Zinifex, the world's second-biggest zinc miner and market darling of late, fell almost 3 per cent, or 23c, to $7.58.
Among the energy stocks, Oil Search fell 8c to $3.82 despite posting a 60 per cent increase in full-year sales revenue to $US638.4 million ($851 million).
The finance sector had a weak start to the day, before recovering towards the close of trading. Westpac rose 8c to $22.69 and St George jumped 16c to $29.42, but the Commonwealth fell 3c to $43.45, National 3c to $33.03 and ANZ 2c to $24.26.
Macquarie Equities' private client adviser David Halliday said the market suffered early, after Wall Street failed to instil confidence in investors here because of a "less than convincing" bounce overnight.
The Dow Jones gained 21.4 points to 10,688.8 and the S&P 500 rose 2.3 points to 1263.8, recovering from the biggest fall in three years on Friday.
The television networks continued to suffer from figures on Monday that showed a downturn in the metropolitan TV advertising market. Publishing & Broadcasting Ltd, the owner of the Nine Network, fell 22c to $16.73 and Seven fell 5c to $8.08. Ten Network rose 1c to $3.04.
John Fairfax also fell 2c to a one-month low of $3.90 after Macquarie Equities said changes to cross-media ownership laws were unlikely to occur this year - "if ever".
Transport predator Toll Holdings was the biggest loser among the leading 200 companies yesterday, falling 55c, or 4.6 per cent, to a 15-month low of $11.40 after takeover target Patrick Corp launched court action to wind up Pacific National. Patrick, the co-owner of the rail freight business, fell 6c to $6.84.
The gloomy news also continued for AWB, which was down another 10c, to $5.