Australians will be reflecting sadly on their falling investment balances again on Wednesday with more damage to be wrought on the Australian sharemarket.
Local investors are set to use the working week’s ‘hump day’ to hand back most of their gains from Tuesday as futures trading was pointing to a drop of almost 2% on the bourse in the wake of continued weakness in New York.
At 9:10 am AEST (11:10 pm GMT) the S&P/ASX 200 index June share price index futures contract was quoted 142 points (1.9%) lower at 7,391, setting the tone for the opening of the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) at 10:00 am AEST.
The main United States stock markers benchmark averages went into reverse on Tuesday (Wednesday AEST) amid lingering concerns about the tit-for-tat tariff announcements by the United States and its trading partners including China.
Stocks slid after a White House official said the US is moving forward with tariffs on China as high as 104%, CommSec said its Morning Report.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 0.8%, the S&P 500 1.6% and the Nasdaq Composite 2.2%.
The S&P 500 reversed a strong morning rally as investor hopes faded of tariff delays or concessions by the U.S. delays before the trade sanctions begin.
"People wanted to be optimistic and eventually realised they didn't have a good reason," SimCorp Managing Director, Investment Decision Research Melissa Brown was quoted by Reuters as saying.
The S&P/ASX200 had ended 2.3% higher at 7,510.0 on Tuesday as 11 sectors rose in value.
Among the stocks to watch will be Scentre Group (ASX: SCG), which holds its annual general meeting today.
On fixed interest markets, yields on Australian Treasury bonds dropped again, particularly as the short end of the curve, with the 10-year rate falling 0.26% to 4.248% and the two-year yield dropped 3.55% to 3.237%.
