LONDON, May 8 (Reuters) - Demand for miners helped European shares edge higher on Wednesday, following strong Chinese trade data which served to underpin major European indexes around multi-year highs.
China's exports rose 14.7 percent in April, while imports grew 16.8 percent, helping maintain the positive sentiment in equities that had helped German and U.S. stocks hit all-time highs on Tuesday.
The STOXX Europe 600 Basic Resources (Xetra: A0JC0X - news) index, which includes mining and commodity related stocks, rose 0.9 percent, helped also by a firmer copper price after the China data.
The sector was down 25 percent on the year to the middle of April, but has rallied 10.7 percent since then.
"The miners have bottomed for the moment, selling has slowed down and they've seen some support forming over the last few weeks," Ioan Smith, director at Knight Capital (NYSE: KCG - news) said, although he warned about the quality of the Chinese data.
"There's an element in the miners as well as the broader market of buying on a fear of missing out on gains... But when people dig down into the numbers they'll notice some spurious data in there."
By 0707 GMT, the FTSEurofirst 300 was up 0.1 percent at 1,221.87, its highest level since July 2008.
