Miners send market back up

The sharemarket finished the week strongly, with the big mining stocks once again leading the way, encouraged higher by booming metal prices.
The upward move in commodities added to a strong lead from Wall Street, where the main indices closed higher on lower oil prices and improved April retail sales.
The benchmark S&P/ASX 200 Index finished at 5255.4, its peak for the day, for a gain of 66.2 points — winning back more than three-quarters of the ground lost in Thursday's big sell-off.
The market's net move after a week of gyrations was a loss of 3.4 points.
"It has recovered a good part of what it lost yesterday (Thursday) and was probably buoyed by a stronger US market, which resulted from the lower oil price, and in addition the higher gold price and higher metal prices," said Intersuisse director of equities Andrew Sekely.
"Those, combined with a reaction to a naturally high sell-off, have resulted in the improvement that we have seen today."
Continuing strength in metal prices, in particular for copper, sent the miners higher, with BHP Billiton picking up 65¢ to $30.30 and rival Rio Tinto piling on $1.70 to $82.75.
The spot price of gold jumped a further $US15.30 an ounce in Sydney trading to close at $US680.40. The gold miners responded, with Newcrest skipping 50¢ higher to $23.13, Newmont moving up 15¢ to $7.45 and Lihir rising 13¢ to $3.29.
An overnight fall of $US2.34 a barrel in the spot crude oil price to $US69.94 didn't take the shine off energy stocks. Woodside picked up 32¢ to $47.37, Oil Search found 7¢ to $4.39 and Santos firmed 38¢ to $11.86.
Among the leading banks, Westpac found 6¢ to $24.43 after posting an improved first-half net profit of $1.47 billion. Commonwealth Bank rose 30¢ to $46.10 and ANZ moved 27¢ higher to $27.92 but National Australia Bank dipped 1¢ to $36.57.
Shares in Macquarie Bank picked up $1.09 to $70.60. Patrick rose 28¢ to $8.98 and Toll shed 67¢ to $13.10.
Health-care company Cochlear surged ahead, gathering $3.50 to $54 after it locked in a $270 million Cochlear implant contract in Taiwan and China.
Retailers were stronger, with Coles Myer strengthening 25¢ to $10.80, David Jones up 1¢ at $2.60 and Woolworths shifting 31¢ higher to $18.86.
Media stocks gained ground. PBL put on 26¢ to $18.58 and Fairfax firmed 3¢ to $3.89 while News Corp's non-voting shares gained 57¢ to $23.04 and the voting scrip rose 56¢ to $24.53.
Telstra climbed 7¢ to $3.85.
The dollar ended a quarter of a US cent higher, despite shedding some of its recent gains after an update from the Reserve Bank dashed hopes of a quick follow-up to this week's interest rate rise.
At 5pm, it was at US76.84¢, up from US76.59¢ on Thursday and well above last week's close of US75.46¢.