While the FTSE 100 continued to tumble this afternoon, mining stocks remained fairly firm on the back of soaring metal prices.
By mid afternoon, the FTSE 100 was down 1.23% at 5746.3.
But while banking stocks suffered, the biggest gainers were Kazakhmys, up 4.6%, Lonmin - up 3.52% - and Anglo American - up 3.02%.
Stainless steel, used to rustproof products from forks to fighter jets, is also being driven up alongside precious metals.
On the broader FTSE 250 index, International Ferro Metals, one of the newest entrants into this market, saw its shares leap by over 11%, as ferrochrome, which is used to coat many products, recorded an all-time high of $2.40 a pound on world markets this week, up 30% from the start of the year.
Stocks on the slide were housing market-related as the credit crunch continued to dominate market concerns.
Taylor Wimpey was among the big losers of the afternoon, down 3.36%, while shares in building merchant Wolseley were down by 1.47% and Home Retail suffered a 3.38% drop.
The falls were driven by rival British building materials group, Travis Perkins, which warned that there may be lower profits this year due to the weaker housing market - despite posting profits for 2007 near the top end of forecasts this morning.
Concerns about the US housing market were flagged up yet again by US Federal Reserve chairman, Ben Bernanke.
He warned of more mortgage delinquencies, repossessions and house price falls and called for a "vigorous response" to the situation.
The Dow Jones industrial average opened lower on recession fears and continued to fall on Bernanke's comments.
It was down 0.9% at 12,142.97 while the Standard & Poor's 500 Index shed 9.70 points or 0.73% at 1321.64.
