It's shaping up to be a decent session for the Australian share market and many S&P/ASX 200 Index (ASX: XJO) shares so far this Tuesday. At the time of writing, the ASX 200 Index has jumped 0.16% and is back over 9,040 points, after rising as high as 9,050 points earlier this morning. But let's talk about what is happening with BHP Group Ltd (ASX: BHP) shares.
While today's trading has been good for the broader market, it has been great for BHP shares.
The 'Big Australian' closed at $54.02 a share yesterday after hitting a record high of $54.75. But this morning, those same shares opened at $55.20 each before rising as high as $55.33. That represents another new 52-week and all-time record high for this ASX 200 mining stock in consecutive days. That's no small feat for a company that has been around since 1851.
At the time of writing, BHP stock has cooled off a little but is still trading at $54.97. That's up a happy 1.8% for the day thus far.
This latest high is just the latest feather in BHP's cap, though. The company has enjoyed an extraordinary return to form over the past few months. BHP shares were as low as $35 each as recently as June 2025.
The company was trading at about $40 a share as recently as November.
Yep, open today's numbers, the BHP share price has jumped 10.5% in the past month alone, 20% since the start of the year, and almost 55% since that $35 level back in June.
So why are BHP shares carving into this previously untouched ground this Tuesday?
Image source: Getty Images
Why are BHP shares at a new record high today?
Well, it's hard to know for sure. But we can point to two potential catalysts. The first is commodity prices themselves. As a diversified miner, BHP shares are highly sensitive to the price movements of its sundry resources, particularly iron ore, gold, and copper.
As it happens, all of these commodities have seen some recent appreciation. Although copper is not quite at the record highs we saw late last month, it is still at the top of its 52-week range at just under US$13,000 per tonne. Although iron ore is going for under US$100 per tonne, gold has rebounded over the past week and is back over US$5,250 an ounce. That's after the precious metal dipped below that US$5,000 mark earlier this month.
These commodity price movements are arguably beneficial for BHP shares.
But we also can't ignore BHP's earnings report last week, which could still be contributing to the miner's positive momentum.
Earnings boost for the Big Australian
As we covered last Tuesday, BHP's half-year results for the six months ending 31 December were nothing to turn one's nose up at.
BHP reported an 11% increase in revenues to US$27.9 billion, as well as a 28% surge in underlying earnings to US$15.46 billion. This helped to push the company's net operating cash flow up 13% to US$9.37 billion, and its underlying profit by 22% to US$6.2 billion.
The miner also upped its next interim dividend by an impressive 46% to 73 US cents per share (fully franked).
BHP shares rallied by more than 4% on the day these earnings came out, and have continued to rise ever since. The company is now up more than 9% since those earnings were released.
So it's likely these reasons that are pushing up the BHP share price to new record highs this Tuesday. Let's see how the rest of the trading week treats this mining giant.
