China demand for commodities driving sentiment improvement

It has been a challenging year for investors in global mining and energy markets.

In January and February, concerns rose about a very severe slowdown in global growth following the crisis that had impacted the world’s financial system after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers. Share prices of resource companies fell very steeply as a result. However, the last few months have seen sharp gains in the global mining and energy markets. Commodity prices have bounced very strongly off their lows of last year. Share prices of some companies have risen very sharply from the distressed levels of late 2008 and early 2009. Much of the improvement in sentiment has arisen from...