Buy everything. That seemed to be the mantra among investors today, sending the FTSE 100 back above the 6000 barrier, gold to a record high and silver to prices not seen since 1980.
Investors were cheered by a solid earnings season from America, with strong numbers from Intel and IBM last night. Monday's jitters - when Standard & Poor's slashed its outlook for US government debt prompting an equities sell-off - seemed largely forgotten. The Footsie climbed 112.07 to 6008.94.
Miners were high on investors' shopping lists as the copper price rose, gold went above $1500 an ounce and spot silver jumped to $44.34, a 31-year-high. Xstrata - helped by a JPMorgan upgrade - jumped 54p to 1512½p, Chilean copper producer Antofagasta gained 44p to 1361p and Rio Tinto advanced 118½p to 4349p.
Only four blue-chip stocks were marked lower, all of which were trading ex-dividend. Weapons-maker BAE Systems fell 4.7p at 321.7p, life insurance firm Resolution slid 5.9p to 286.5p, publisher Reed Elsevier was off 10p at 527½p and pensions group Legal & General dipped 0.2p to 116.5p.
Cheer from across the Atlantic lifted chip designer ARM Holdings. Intel, the chipmaking giant, posted forecast-smashing first-quarter figures, helping to assuage fears that the Japanese earthquake would hit demand in the sector. With the European technology sector marked sharply higher, ARM took pole position on the top tier, shooting up 25½p to 601p. "Intel is always a bell-wether stock, it's right at the start of the earnings season," explained Lee Simpson of Jefferies & Company.
BP rose 12½p to 465p on the first anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, in which 11 men were killed. Cazenove reckoned that the shares offer an "extreme value opportunity".
A cash-raising sent Range Resources down 2½p to 21p. The Australian oil group, a favourite with private punters, announced a share issue to fund a shopping trip in Trinidad. Range has bought the remaining 90% interest in three production licenses for onshore oilfields that it did not already own.
The company, which often sees heavy volumes, was the most traded stock in London, with more than 100 million shares changing hands by 10am. Range also plans to start drilling in Georgia in just over a month, and investors were chattering about its plans in Puntland, Somalia. Old Park Lane Capital advised snapping up the shares, saying: "The management is making huge progress de-risking the business while maintaining exposure to highly attractive exploration upside."
Fellow oil explorer Bowleven was the day's horror show, plunging 43¼p to 299¾p.
Investors were disappointed by an update on its Sapele-1 well in Cameroon, where it struck oil in November. It now looks as though it will be more difficult to extract that crude than initially thought. But its shares have still had an incredible run; they were worth only 130p a year ago.
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