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MELBOURNE - Australian stocks have managed to retain their gains to hit new closing highs, despite a choppy day's trade.
The local bourse bucked an upwards lead from Wall St to open lower, as falls in many base metals prices took their toll on the mining sector.
At the 1615 AEST close, the bluechip S&P/ASX200 index was up 25 points to a new closing high of 6397, while the all ordinaries climbed 27.7 points to a new record of 6421.1.
On the Sydney Futures Exchange, the June share price index futures contract was 29 points higher at 6415 on a volume of 126,523 contracts.
Aequs Securities institutional dealer Ric Klusman siad that after a lower open, large surpluses of cash in the market today helped the bourse to modest gains.
"The distributions from all the property trusts are hitting the market, plus a major amount of superannuation, plus the tax benefits on the super," Mr Klusman said.
He said some of the major damage in the market had been done by Telstra and the Commonwealth Bank, as well as the major mining houses.
The world's biggest miner BHP Billiton ended 37 cents lower at A$34.55, while Rio Tinto dropped 66 cents to A$100.49.
"The area that has benefited most is the property trusts area as they come up for their distributions, most of them, and also the slowing housing market in the US indicating that maybe there will be no pressure on interest rates in the US," Mr Klusman said.
"Generally I would expect our market to remain reasonably firm coming up to the 30th of June."
At 1621 AEST the spot price of gold in Sydney had eked out a gain of US$2.80 to US$659.5 per fine ounce.
But miners of the precious metal moved lower, with Newcrest reversing 43 cents to A$23.58 and Lihir tumbling three cents to A$3.13.
Banks seemed undecided, with Commonwealth losing 24 cents to A$55.16 and Westpac shedding eight cents to A$25.84, but National added 21 cents to A$41.44 and ANZ also climbed 13 cents to A$29.55.
Telecommunications giant Telstra slipped four cents to A$4.72, while national carrier Qantas also gave back two cents to A$5.73.
The market eventually managed to follow Wall Street's lead, with US stocks rising as a fall in bond yields kept interest rate worries at bay even though concerns emerged over consumer spending.
The Dow Jones industrial average climbed 22.44 points to 13,635.42 and the Standard & Poor's 500 Index added 2.65 points to 1,533.70.
The Nasdaq Composite Index edged ahead 0.16 of a point to 2,626.76.
Among media plays, Ten Network surrendered seven cents to A$2.87, after posting a 7.1 per cent decline in nine-month earnings, though the broadcaster still says its television business will improve on last year's performance.
Elsewhere in the sector, PBL was nine cents weaker at A$19.20, but Fairfax picked up five cents to A$4.88, News Corp was ahead six cents at A$28.16 and its non-voting shares added 16 cents to A$26.18.
In retail Woolworths gained three cents to A$27.65, but Coles lost three cents to A$16.90 and David Jones slipped one cent to A$5.36.
The most traded stock was uranium explorer Western Metals, with 52.99 million shares worth A$13.04 million changing hands, and its stock ending 3.5 cents higher at 26 cents.
The company has exploration interests in Australia and Tanzania.
Preliminary market turnover was 2.1 billion shares worth A$7.3 billion, with 742 companies ending higher, 582 lower and 380 unchanged.
- AAP