Australian sharemarket eases for second straight day after negative Wall Street lead over rising COVID cases

The ASX fell for the second consecutive day after a negative overnight lead from Wall Street over COVID concerns.

The Australian sharemarket fell for the second straight day after a negative lead from Wall Street over concerns about growing COVID-19 cases around the world.

The benchmark S&P/ASX200 index retreated below the 7000-point mark, finishing 0.29 per cent lower at 6997.5 while the All Ordinaries Index shed 0.32 per cent to 7258.9.

CommSec analyst James Tao said the US and Australian markets had hit record highs in recent days, so some easing was being seen.

OpenMarkets Group chief executive Ivan Tchourilov said the local bourse sank in morning trade but showed some resilience and clawed back much of the losses.

Healthcare outperformed the market, Mr Tchourilov said.

CSL, Australia’s biggest healthcare stock, gained 1.52 per cent to $267.95, sleep breathing disorder device maker ResMed appreciated 1.17 per cent to $26.73 and Imugene advanced 8.11 per cent to 20 cents after reporting a clinical milestone for its HER-Vaxx cancer immunotherapy.

ResMed makes CPAP machines for people suffering sleep apnoea.

OpenMarkets clients took the opportunity to accumulate Fortescue during today’s pullback, with the stock being the single most purchased, Mr Tchourilov said.

“As iron ore continues to surge – hitting 10-year highs overnight – investors looking for both yield and growth can find this in Fortescue,” he said.

Fortescue was steady at $21.60.

Rio Tinto softened 0.09 per cent to $120.09 and fellow mining giant BHP gave up 0.5 per cent to $47.21 after reporting record iron ore production at its all-important mines in Western Australia’s Pilbara region in the nine months to March 31.

BHP also achieved record average concentrator throughput at its epic Escondida copper mine in Chile, which was better than the company anticipated, but the coal division performed poorly, mainly due to wet weather at the company’s Queensland and NSW operations.

Analysts are asking where BHP’s next big growth project is beyond the Jensen potash development in Canada. Picture: David Mariuz/AAP

Tech stocks were weak, with investigative analytics company Nuix plunging 15.39 per cent to $4.29 after downgrading its prospectus earnings forecasts from $193.5m to as low as $180m.

Nuix said there had been an acceleration in customers moving to consumption and software-as-a-service licences, which generally meant lower upfront revenue, while the current operating climate had reduced near-term upsell opportunities.

Splitit, which enables shoppers to break up purchases into monthly interest-free instalments using their existing credit card, sank 5.33 per cent to 80 cents despite reporting 247 per cent year-over-year growth in merchant sales volume, saying the result would have been higher without the deliberate shift away from debit cards.

Buy-now-pay-later market darling Afterpay slid 2.72 per cent to $121.82, smaller rival Zip Co declined 2.78 per cent to $8.75, logistics software provider WiseTech Global gave up 3.62 per cent to $30.63 and accounting software maker Xero dipped 1.43 per cent to $141.68.

Dreamworld owner Ardent Leisure says conditions will remain challenging until at least the second half of the next financial year, when it hopes there will be ‘pent-up local and interstate demand’. Picture: Quinn Rooney/Getty Images

John Osborne has stepped down as the chief executive of Ardent Leisure’s theme park business for personal reasons and has been replaced by the division’s chief operating officer Greg Yong.

Ardent, which owns Dreamworld and the Q1 Skypoint observation deck on the Gold Coast, said the recent Greater Brisbane snap lockdown had hindered its trading performance over the Easter holiday period and conditions would remain challenging until at least the second half of next financial year.

Ardent shares jumped 8.1 per cent to $1.

Corporate Travel Management rose 3.52 per cent to $19.70 after saying it broke even in March and expects positive underlying earnings in the fourth quarter.

ANZ slid 0.84 per cent to $28.42, Commonwealth Bank firmed 0.49 per cent to $88.17, National Australia Bank retreated 1.09 per cent to $26.21 and Westpac shed 1.03 per cent to $24.98.

In the energy sector, Oil Search declined 2.05 per cent to $3.82, Beach Energy lost 2.56 per cent to $1.71, Santos erased 1.14 per cent to $6.94, Origin backtracked 1.22 per cent to $4.05 and Woodside Petroleum dropped 1.46 per cent to $23.

The Aussie dollar was fetching 77.2 US cents, 55.36 British pence and 64.16 Euro cents in afternoon trade.