Australian shares ended lower on Friday, shadowing Wall Street which took a breather from a strong run, with materials and financials leading the broad-based selloff. The S&P/ASX 200 index ended 0.8 percent, or 46.588 points, down at 5,730.00, posting its biggest intraday percentage loss in over a month. It lost 0.2 percent on the week. All major sectors, except telecom stocks, traded in negative territory.
Gary Burton, a market analyst at IG Markets, attributed some of the weakness to investors cashing in on Thursday's strong gains.
The benchmark index rose 1.3 percent on Thursday.
Financials, tracked their US peers, ending 0.7 percent lower, with the "Big Four" banks losing between 0.6 to 1.3 percent.
Materials were dragged down by commodity prices, as gold and copper prices fell in the face of a strong dollar.
The benchmark mining index lost as much as 2.7 percent, its biggest intraday percentage loss in over 13 weeks.
Global miners Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton ended 4.1 percent and 1.4 percent lower respectively.
On the other end, QBE Insurance Group resisted losses by ending 1.8 percent higher.
New Zealand's benchmark S&P/NZX 50 index fell 0.2 percent, or 14.96 points, to finish the session at 7,160.87. The index added 1.5 percent on the week, snapping two weeks of losses. Westpac Banking Corp fell 1.3 percent, while Sky Network Television Ltd lost 2.7 percent.
Comments
Comments are closed.