Jittery investors are flocking to the safe-haven asset gold today and the sharp rise in the precious metal's price has added to activity on a busy day for London-listed miners.
A weak dollar and rising demand for safer assets helped gold set a fresh record, with US futures pushing through $1,000 an ounce for the first time ever.
Financial betting site BetsForTraders.com says the rise prompted a rush towards wagers on miner Rio Tinto. The site has processed seven times the average number of bets on Rio Tinto today, with 82% of its clients forecasting a rise in the company's share price.
"The combination of chaos in the global financial markets and the economic doom that we are facing, has led to demand for the investment safe haven that gold is perceived to be sky rocketing. Based on the fundamentals and the pattern of client betting, we are forecasting gold at $2,000 per ounce by Christmas 2008," said the bookmaker's market analyst Ryan Kneale.
Rio Tinto shares ended down 35p, or 0.5%, at £54.07, falling along with most other bluechips. Overall, the FTSE 100 has ended up down 84 points, or 1.45%, at 5,692.4 - just shy of wiping out yesterday's 86 points of gains.
Rio's rival mining company Kazakhmys was down a much sharper 1.97% at £17.45, after it told the market it had not received a takeover proposal from rival Eurasian Natural Resources. Speculation had driven the shares up 16% on Wednesday.
Xstrata was headed the other way, up 1.76% to £39.21 and one of the FTSE 100's biggest risers, on market talk that its prospective buyer Vale was nearing a conclusion in negotiations with Xstrata's biggest shareholder Glencore.
The biggest riser of the day remains Unilever, still riding high on rival Nestle's upbeat outlook. The UK company ended up 51p, or 3.19%, at £16.51. The biggest loser is also unchanged, building materials firm Wolseley ends down 37p, or 6.3%, at 550p.
Finally, one stock worth looking at further down the market is David Montgomery's European newspaper group Mecom. The former Mirror group chief's company climbed more than 16% to 29.75p after its bigger-than-expected rise in underlying pre-tax profits. The group also said it planned to leave Aim for the main market next month.
