Morning Markets: Miner revival sends FTSE higher

Early gains among major miners helped boost the FTSE by 34.93 points (0.64%) to 5508.41 in early trading.

Xstrata, Kazakhyms, Eurasian Natural Resources, BHP Billiton and Vedanta Resources were more than 2% higher, reversing the losses seen over the past few sessions. Home Retail leads the losses, down 2.93% to 275.2p, despite revealing full-year profit is likely to beat consensus estimates by £20m. In the US, the Dow Jones closed up 0.5% at 10,680.77 points on Wednesday. The index was buoyed by rises for pharmaceutical groups Merck and Pfizer, which closed 3.68% and 2.34% higher respectively. In Japan, the Nikkei 225 closed Thursday ahead 172.6 points (1.61%) to 10,907.68, despite ...