BHP cushions bourse's pre-Easter slide

Mining giant BHP Billiton was the lone bright star as the Australian stock market closed slightly lower ahead of the Easter weekend.
The market closed two hours early on Thursday ahead of the long weekend, with the S&P/ASX 200 down 8 points to 5175.7 and the All Ordinaries easing 7.7 points to 5132.3.
Macquarie Equities client adviser David Halliday said the market had started with a bang in the morning but had then tailed off as investors and traders turned their minds to the holiday break.
"It has been a patchy day, and if it wasn't for the resources, particularly BHP (Billiton), we would be even weaker than we are," he said.
Commodity prices leapt overnight and BHP Billiton ended the day up 26c at $29.75 but fellow mining giant Rio Tinto went the other way, dipping 28c to $82.32.
Banking stocks were mixed with Westpac advancing 9c to $24.47 and ANZ up 3c to $27.07 while NAB dipped 24c to $36.53 and Commonwealth Bank eased 16c to $45.50.
Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation climbed 26c to $24.65 with the non-voting stock rising 18c to $23.08.
Ramsay Health Care shot up 29c to $10.50 after the private hospital operator announced it was selling its remaining residential aged-care business to Domain Aged Care Group for about $67 million.
The Australian Stock Exchange fell 21c to $32.70 while the Sydney Futures Exchange Corporation dropped 11c to $16.00, after the pair said no circumstances had emerged to jeopardise their proposed merger.
Rinker Group, the third-biggest building materials maker in the US, climbed 32c to $20.90. The stock was raised to "buy" from "neutral" at UBS on expectations that profit growth would continue to drive the shares higher.
While rising interest rates and house prices may trigger a housing slowdown in the US, the supply of building products such as cement would hardly increase, allowing Rinker to still raise earnings in its biggest market, UBS said in a note to clients.
"We're not overly concerned about the US-related shares," said Brian Ingham at Reward Management Australia in Sydney. "There's enough earnings growth and valuations are low enough to still be confident."
Gale Pacific slumped 11c to $1.60 after the manufacturer and exporter of polymer fabrics downgraded its profit forecast.
Iron ore hopeful Cazaly Resources raced ahead 22.5c to $2.09 on speculation that a decision on its dispute with Rio Tinto could be handed down imminently.
Telstra rose 2c to $3.67 as Communications Minister Helen Coonan said she wanted the Government to defer a decision on the price the telco charged its rivals for access to its copper wire network until early May.
AWB climbed 5c to $3.85 as Prime Minister John Howard fronted the Cole inquiry into the wheat exporter's payments to Saddam Hussein's regime.
Retail stocks were mixed with Woolworths rising 7c to $18.63. Supermarket rival Coles Myer, which was trading ex-dividend, lost 30c to $10.85.
The spot price of gold closed in Sydney at $US594.90 an ounce, down $US2.10/oz on the previous close. Gold stocks lost ground with Australia's largest producer Newcrest Mining falling 58c to $22.25 and Papua New Guinea miner Lihir Gold down 7c to $2.82.
On the Sydney Futures Exchange, the June share price index contract closed at 5189, up 9 points.