ASX ends on a sour note, miners slump on tariff talk; Star sinks

Welcome to your five-minute recap of the trading day.

The numbers

The Australian sharemarket has closed the week and earnings season on a sour note, wiping off its gains for the year, as fears of a protracted US-China tariff war weighed on the mining heavyweights. The Australian dollar also lost ground, while casino operator Star Entertainment’s shares plummeted as it made a last-ditch attempt to keep its doors open.

The S&P/ASX200 index closed down 95.8 points, or 1.2 per cent, at 8172.40 points. Ten of the 11 industry sectors retreated, with information technology and materials bringing the greatest losses. The Australian dollar was fetching US62.4¢, having already recorded its biggest one-day drop of the year on Thursday.

Markets around the world are on edge as Trump lays out his plans.Credit: AP

The lifters

Harvey Norman was among the best performers of the day, with the retailer lifting 2.6 per cent following positive first-half results. The company increased its pre-tax profit by $116.7 million, or 41.2 per cent.

Communications services was the only sector that finished the day in the green, with shares incrementally higher at 0.2 per cent at the market’s close. The sector was buoyed by lifts from TPG (up 2.4 per cent), Telstra (up 0.7 per cent) and REA Group (up 0.6 per cent), which offset falls from Seek and CAR Group.

Investors sent shares in TPG Telecom – the parent company of Vodafone – surging after it released upbeat earnings results on Friday for the year to December 31 – it posted underlying earnings of $198 million while revenue was flat, up $13 million to $5.5 billion.

TPG chief executive Inaki Berroeta attributed the results in part to TPG’s competitive pricing. “It’s important for an essential service to be efficient, to be affordable,” he said. “The affordability of the mobile service has always been in the hands of the customer because of that competition that exists.”

Meridian Energy (up 3.7 per cent) delivered an end-of-day boost among utilities, but it was not enough to lift the whole sector, which ended the day down 1.1 per cent.

The laggards

Star Entertainment was 15.4 per cent lower as the market closed. The embattled casino giant entered a brief trading halt on Friday morning, before announcing that its board was in a desperate attempt to secure funding, which could potentially stave off financial collapse. Shares plunged on the resumption of trade.

Mining shares continued to retreat as the market closed, with BHP shares falling 2.5 per cent. Fortescue (down 3.7 per cent) and Rio Tinto (down 2.9 per cent) also saw a drop. Overnight, US President Donald Trump announced he would impose a further 10 per cent tariff on Chinese goods.

Endeavour Group fell by 7.1 per cent. The liquor retailer released its first-half profits on Friday, announcing a 0.7 per cent fall in overall sales and a 6.6 per cent drop in earnings before interest and tax.

Woolworths (down 2.3 per cent) and Coles (down 2 per cent) were also subdued after both supermarket giants experienced a lift on Thursday, with first-half results from Coles beating market expectations.

Meanwhile, the big four banks were mixed. ANZ (down 0.3 per cent) and NAB (down 0.4 per cent) fell, while CBA lifted 0.3 per cent. Westpac was the best performer of the quartet, rising by 0.6 per cent.

In the US, stock indexes fell sharply as Wall Street’s frenzy around artificial-intelligence technology faltered on Thursday.

The S&P 500 sank 1.6 per cent for its fifth drop in six days after setting an all-time high last week. Concerns about the US economy’s future have been behind much of the drop, including worries about how tariffs pushed by Trump could worsen inflation. The Dow Jones fell 193 points, or 0.4 per cent, and the Nasdaq composite tumbled 2.8 per cent.

Weighing most heavily on the market was superstar stock Nvidia. After initially rising at the open of trading, following a better-than-expected profit report, Nvidia quickly slid to a loss of 8.5 per cent.

The market also soured on Salesforce, which fell 4 per cent despite topping analysts’ profit expectations for the latest quarter. Several analysts called the performance solid, and the company continued to tout its AI offerings, but it gave a forecast for coming revenue that fell short of expectations.

The lowdown

Better-than-expected earnings reports have become routine for Nvidia, whose chips are powering the surge into AI technology, but this was the company’s first since DeepSeek shook the entire AI industry.

Nvidia’s performance for the latest quarter, along with its forecasts for coming results, were “good enough to keep the debate moving in a positive direction”, said analysts at UBS led by Timothy Arcuri.

However, apparently it wasn’t enough to send Nvidia’s stock higher, particularly given criticism that its price had already leapt too high, too fast. After more than tripling two years ago, Nvidia’s stock more than doubled last year as its sales exploded.

Back in Australia, Josh Gilbert, a market analyst at eToro, said it had been a “sea of red” across the ASX on Friday. “Every sector [has performed] poorly after Wall Street’s sell-off hit the local market. Unsurprisingly, tech has been hit the hardest, with Nvidia plummeting 8.5 per cent while the rest of the Magnificent 7 also fell.

“Trump is creating uncertainty and, as always, markets hate uncertainty,” Gilbert said.

“Although Australia has avoided the president’s scrutiny so far, our relationship with the world’s largest economy, China, means our local market is still feeling some of the pain.”

Tweet of the day

Quote of the day

“We’re talking about a workforce that is mostly women, many of whom have families to support, are part-time, and none are highly paid. I think if you put that all together, that was for me why there was a strong case for us to act early.”

That’s Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations Murray Watt on the decision to grant Mosaic Brands workers early access to the fair entitlement guarantee scheme. Almost 3000 staff have lost jobs after the clothing retailer collapsed in January.

You can read the full story by Jessica Yun here.

With Cindy Yin, AP

The Market Recap newsletter is a wrap of the day’s trading. Get it each weekday afternoon.