Mining stocks were putting in an impressive performance on Wednesday after politicians in the US struck a deal to avert the fiscal cliff, a series of automatic spending cuts and tax increases that risked plunging the world's largest economy into recession.

The House of Representatives passed a Senate-backed bill in the early hours of Tuesday morning to dodge the fiscal cliff, by 257 votes to 167. A day before it had cleared the Senate by a majority of 89 votes to eight.

Market strategist Ishaq Siddiqi from ETX Capital said: "2013 has kicked off with a bang with bulls in full control of price-action - the risk rally sees all your traditional investments in vogue [stocks EUROSTOXX making 16-month high, euro, commodities, peripheral bond yields, banks, miners et al] while core government bonds and US Treasuries take a beating."

Stock markets across Europe celebrated the news, with major indices across the continent rising between 2% and 4%. In London, the FTSE 100 was up 2.38% at 6,038 in afternoon trade as investors' appetites for risk increased. The last time the Footsie closed higher was at the end of April 2011.

Steel producer and diversified mining group EVRAZ was among the best performers on the UK benchmark, gaining around 8%, while commodities trader Glencore increased 7.3% and diversified metals producer Xstrata rose 7.2%.

Gold prices reached a two-week high today of $1,692.60 an ounce in New York as the dollar weakened after the budget deal. Meanwhile, copper rose the most in three months while tin surged to a 10-month high.


Top performing sectors so far today
Industrial Metals & Mining 2,960.24 +7.97%
Mining 20,668.28 +5.36%
Personal Goods 20,535.38 +4.69%
Aerospace and Defence 4,072.43 +3.90%
Industrial Engineering 8,445.60 +3.57%

Bottom performing sectors so far today
Tobacco 35,459.58 -0.34%

BC

Related share prices
Xstrata (XTA) share price
Glencore Xstrata (GLEN) share price
Evraz (EVR) share price