Buyers in at the start, picking up 'bargains'

The stockmarket staged a minor recovery yesterday, with the big resource companies leading the rebound from Tuesday's big fall.

The market opened sharply weaker - 24.5 points below Tuesday's close, which itself was down 27.1 points - following another night of extreme volatility, but mostly down, on US markets.

But buyers were in the local market almost from the start and kicked the ASX200 index up to a peak of 4877.4 just after lunch.

It finished 11.9 above the line at 4850.8.

The All Ordinaries was up 7.8 to 4815 points at the close.

European markets were wobbly in early trading last night but settled into a slightly positive sideways pattern.

At the close of trading on the Sydney Futures Exchange, the June share price contract had moved up 50 to 4875 points, 24.2 points up on the physical, on a big volume of 87,928 contracts - the contract expires today.

Intersuisse director of equities Andrew Sekely said the turnaround would be good news to investors disheartened by last week's miserable performance.

"In response to what happened overseas, the market initially fell very heavily, but we've seen - from its lowest point - a turnaround of just over 100 points," Mr Sekely said.

"It is obviously nice to see and should give a little bit of confidence back to investors who'd been hit around the head a bit earlier in the week."

More volatility was likely, though, Mr Sekely said.

"The market is volatile and even though we've had this 100 point turnaround we could easily see the market fall again tomorrow," he said.

The big miners led the rebound, with BHP Billiton finishing 37c higher at $25.62 while Rio Tinto piled on $2.15 to $73.05.

Oil prices fell overnight Tusdsay but energy stocks were mostly stronger with Woodside putting on 66c to $40.78 and Santos was up 11c at $10.86. Oil Search, though, fell 5c to $3.83.

The big banks were slightly lower with NAB dropping 5c to $33.90, Westpac 10c to $21.90 and ANZ 10c to $25.55. The Commonwealth was up 8c at $42.30.

Other financial stocks were mixed with Macquarie Bank up $2 to $63 and St George dipping 87c to $28.14.

Shares in the Australian Stock Exchange added $1.40 to $30.90 and SFE Corp rallied by 22c to $15.75 after the $5.3 billion merger between the two companies moved ahead with the announcement that SFE boss Robert Elstone would head the new entity.

Retailer Woolworths lost 7c to $18.68 after selling its distribution centres for $846 million.

Other retailers were also lower, with Coles Myer dipping 7c lower to $11.37 and Harvey Norman 2c weaker at $3.98.

Media stocks lacked direction with PBL up 12c to $17.92, Fairfax down 1c to $3.75 and News Corp softer by 18c to $26 while its non-voters were up 1c to $24.94.

After the spot price of gold collapsed overnight the domestic price finished the day's trading at $US559.00 an ounce, down $US34.45 from Tuesday's local close.

Yet goldminers were mixed, with Lihir picking up 3c to $2.55, Newcrest lifting 20c to $18.20 but Newmont fell 7c to $6.43 and Bendigo was down 10c at $1.72. AngloGold AShanti was down 16c at $10.50.

The most traded stock was Lion Energy with 145 million shares worth a total of $690,000 traded.

Shares in Lion moved up 0.02c to 0.5c.