Australian Market Significantly Lower

(RTTNews) - The Australian stock market is significantly lower on Friday, giving up the gains in the previous session, with the benchmark S&P/ASX 200 falling below the 6,800 level, following the broadly negative cues from Wall Street overnight, dragged by weakness in mining and energy stocks amid tumbling commodity prices.

The benchmark S&P/ASX 200 Index is losing 56.80 points or 0.83 percent to 6,786.10, after hitting a low of 6,781.50 earlier. The broader All Ordinaries Index is down 58.20 points or 0.82 percent to 7,024.30. Australian markets ended modestly higher on Thursday.

Among major miners, OZ Minerals and Rio Tinto are slipping almost 1 percent each, while BHP Group is losing 1.5 percent, Fortescue Metals is down more than 1 percent and Mineral Resources is sliding almost 2 percent.

Oil stocks are weak. Origin Energy and Woodside Energy are losing almost 2 percent each, while Beach energy and Santos are slipping more than 2 percent each.

Among tech stocks, Afterpay owner Block is edging down 0.1 percent, Xero is down almost 1 percent and WiseTech Global is declining more than 3 percent, while Appen and Zip are losing more than 2 percent each. Among the big four banks, National Australia Bank is gaining almost 2 percent, Westpac is adding almost 1 percent and ANZ Banking is edging up 0.1 percent, while Commonwealth Bank is flat.

Gold miners are weak. Newcrest Mining is losing more than 2 percent, Resolute Mining is plunging almost 7 percent and Gold Road Resources is down almost 5 percent, while Northern Star Resources and Evolution Mining are sliding 3.5 percent each.

In other news, shares in Atlas Arteria are plummeting almost 14 percent after the toll road operator announced it had bought a 66.6 percent stake in a toll way in Chicago.

In the currency market, the Aussie dollar is trading at $0.670 on Friday.

On Wall Street, stocks fluctuated over the course of the session on Thursday before coming under considerable pressure in the latter part of the session. The Dow and the S&P 500 more than offset Wednesday's gains, falling to their lowest closing levels in two months.

The major averages climbed off their worst lows of the session going into the close but remained firmly negative. The Dow slid 173.27 points or 0.6 percent to 30,961.82, the Nasdaq tumbled 167.32 points or 1.4 percent to 11,552.36 and the S&P 500 slumped 44.66 points or 1.1 percent to 3,901.36.

The major European markets also moved mostly lower on the day. While the U.K.'s FTSE 100 Index bucked the downtrend and inched up by 0.1 percent, the German DAX Index fell by 0.6 percent and the French CAC 40 Index slumped by 1.0 percent.

Crude oil futures fell sharply on Thursday amid concerns about outlook for energy demand, and on reports about a tentative deal between rail road union and its workers to avert a potentially disastrous rail strike in the U.S. West Texas Intermediate Crude oil futures for October ended lower by $3.38 or about 3.8% at $85.10 a barrel, the lowest settlement since September 8.