ASX slumps on back of US falls

THE Australian sharemarket fell sharply in line with heavy declines on Wall Street overnight, suffering its biggest daily tumble in four months, with tech stocks among the losers.

The S&P/ASX200 finished 1.93 per cent lower at 6649.7 while the All Ordinaries Index dropped 2.02 per cent to 6917.6. Axi chief global market strategist Stephen Innes said concern about “horrifyingly discouraging” snail’s pace COVID-19 vaccine rollouts and the US stimulus debate were big factors weighing on Wall Street. CommSec analyst Tom Piotrowski said the ASX slump was not surprising given the negative US lead and recent rallies on both markets.

“At its worst level, the ASX200 was down by almost 2.8 per cent, at which point it was the worst decline that we’ve seen for the local sharemarket since September of last year,” Mr Piotrowski said.

“And that kind of marries up with what we saw on Wall Street last night – the Dow was down at its worst extent since October last year.”

In the tech sector, buy-now, pay-later market leader Afterpay, which last week hit a record high, declined 6.19 per cent to $136.97.

Smaller rivals Openpay plunged 11.72 per cent to $2.56 despite reporting a 58 per cent jump in December quarter revenue, Zip Co dropped 5.93 per cent to $7.30 and Sezzle retreated 3.84 per cent to $8.27. Among healthcare stocks, biotech giant CSL gave up 3.02 per cent to $266.90, sleep disorder device company ResMed slid 4.06 per cent to $27.42 and hearing device pioneer Cochlear was down 2.95 per cent at $195.60.