Real estate marketplace Domain fell 4 per cent to $4.29 after US property giant CoStar said its sweetened $4.43 per share takeover bid for the company was its “best and final offer”.
Among the brighter spots in midday trade were energy stocks, with oil and gas giants Woodside (up 0.8 per cent) and Santos (up 0.3 per cent) and refiner Ampol (up 1.5 per cent) all advancing after oil prices strengthened overnight. The mining heavyweights BHP (up 0.5 per cent) and Rio Tinto (up 0.3 per cent) also gained after a rise in iron ore prices.
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Overnight on Wall Street, the S&P 500 sank 1.1 per cent to break what had been a run of calmer trading. The Dow Jones swung from a gain in the morning to a loss of 0.3 per cent, while the weakness for Big Tech sent the Nasdaq composite to a market-leading drop of 2 per cent.
The group of dominant stocks known as the “Magnificent Seven” has been at the centre of the US stock market’s recent sell-off, which earlier this month took the S&P 500 10 per cent below its all-time high for its first “correction” since 2023. Big Tech had rocketed in earlier years amid a frenzy around artificial-intelligence technology, and critics said their prices rose too quickly compared with their already rapidly growing profits.
Nvidia fell 6 per cent to bring its loss for the young year so far to 15.5 per cent. It was the single heaviest weight on the S&P 500 by far.
Other AI-related stocks were also weak, including server-builder Super Micro Computer, which fell 8.9 per cent, and power companies hoping to electrify AI data centres.
Tesla has been contending with additional challenges, including worries that political anger at its CEO, Elon Musk, will hurt the electric-vehicle maker’s sales. Tesla dropped 5.6 per cent to extend its loss for 2025 to 32.6 per cent.
Other US automakers went on their own sharp swings after the White House flagged the new car import tariffs that were announced after the US stock market closed. General Motors sank 3.1 per cent. Ford Motor went from an early gain to a loss and back before inching up by 0.1 per cent.
“What we’re going to be doing is a 25 per cent tariff for all cars that are not made in the United States,” Trump said at an event in the Oval Office. “We start off with a 2.5 per cent base, which is what we’re at, and go to 25 per cent.”
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Trump has long promised higher duties on imported cars, and the timing of the announcement suggests that they would coincide with his April 2 plans for reciprocal tariffs aimed at the countries responsible for the bulk of the US trade deficit.
The US stock market had been steadying somewhat following its drop into a correction, with a three-day winning streak running through Tuesday. But strategists along Wall Street have warned the sharp swings likely aren’t over yet, with a suite of US tariffs scheduled to arrive next week. Even if those end up less painful for the global economy than feared, all the talk about tariffs has already soured confidence among US consumers and companies.
So far, the US economy and job market have appeared to remain solid despite the worsening moods of shoppers and businesses, and economists are looking for signals about whether the hit to confidence is translating into actual pain for the economy.
In other international markets, indexes were mixed across much of Europe and Asia.
