Australian shares are set to open higher on Wednesday, although futures pared earlier gains as selling intensified on Wall Street, while oil prices approached US$99 per barrel and United States bond yields edged higher.
S&P/ASX 200 futures were up 17 points, or 0.2%, at 8,924.
Overnight in the U.S., major benchmark averages declined, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average falling 1.2%, the S&P 500 losing 0.6% and the Nasdaq dipping 0.3% as Salesforce and other software makers came under pressure.
"Astra has kind of reignited the software disruption fears and it's resumed that old trend that we got used to for a while, where semiconductor stocks and data center capex beneficiaries do well, while software stocks do poorly," Jed Ellerbroek, portfolio manager at Argent Capital Management, was quoted as saying in a Reuters story.
The Australian sharemarket fell on Tuesday as rising oil prices amid the Middle East conflict and elevated bond yields weighed on investor sentiment.
The S&P/ASX 200 lost 90.1 points, or 1.0%, to 8,920.8, with eight of the 11 sectors finishing lower.
On the bond markets, the local 10-year yield was flat at 5.196%, while two-year rates fell 0.6% to 4.83%.
