In keeping with the rest of the year, the mining sector was a major influence on the market, helping the FTSE 100 hold onto its gains.
With copper prices up nearly 2% Vedanta Resources is leading the way, up 75p to £26.15 with Xstrata up 23p at £11.11 and Lonmin lifted 40p to £19.20.
So the FTSE 100 is up 22.88 points at 5425.29 while the FTSE 250 has added 64.76 points to 9276.71. With almost nothing in the way of corporate news and many traders taking time off between Christmas and the New Year, volumes are unsurprisingly thin. Manoj Ladwa, senior trader at ETX Capital, said:
With Wall Street suffering overnight jitters on the back of the attempted terrorist attack in Detroit it will be interesting to see how London fares this morning. [There was] some good news from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development which has revised down its unemployment forecasts to 2.8m by next summer.
Among the fallers is British Airways, down 1.7p at 190.3p, not helped by the news of the attempted Detroit attack.
Elsewhere Vodafone is up 1.35p to 143.55p. The company has announced a small acquisition for its Turkish business, which is buying voice and data services group Borusan Telekom.
