22-04-2025
Fall on Australian sharemarket follows Wall Street's sell-off
The Australian sharemarket has fallen after US President Donald Trump's attacks on Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell sent Wall Street into a slide.
The market, expected to open slightly higher with futures pointing to a rise of 47 points, instead was down after opening, sliding 0.65 per cent, or 50.70 points, to 7768.40.
The 0.65 per cent dip in the ASX/S&P200 at 10.20am on Tuesday was a slight recovery from a 1 per cent drop earlier in the morning. The Australian dollar is trading at US64.03¢.
Information technology and energy sectors were hit the hardest, both down 1.82 per cent, followed by real estate, down 1.46 per cent. All sectors were down at 10.30am.
Energy company Yancoal (down 2 per cent) lost ground, Woodside fell 1.54 per cent and Ampol dropped 1.2 per cent. The brunt of the morning's drop was felt by the embattled IT firm WiseTech, which lost 2.15 per cent, and TechnologyOne (down 1.8 per cent).
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The hardest-hit companies overall were Meridian Energy (down 3.5 per cent) and miner South 32 and data centre operator NEXTDC (both down almost 2.8 per cent).
However, other miners felt the strongest growth of the morning, with Evolution, De Grey and Northern Star Resources all up more than 1 per cent.
Macquarie Group was one of the few financial institutions to have positive growth on Tuesday morning (up 0.27 per cent), after announcing a $2.8 billion sale of its US and European assets to Japanese firm Nomura.
