Investment giant Macquarie Group lost 0.4 per cent, while insurers Suncorp (down 0.7 per cent) and IAG (down 0.8 per cent) also lost ground.
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Technology shares fell amid a wider “rotation” away from tech stocks in overseas markets, with WiseTech shedding 1 per cent, Xero losing 4.1 per cent and TechnologyOne falling 1.1 per cent.
Overnight, the S&P 500 slipped 0.5 per cent for its second straight loss after setting its all-time high. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dipped 42 points, or 0.1 per cent, and the Nasdaq composite lost 1 per cent.
The US corporate earnings season has kicked off this week, and overnight, several US banking giants fell sharply after posting their results.
Wells Fargo helped pull the market lower after falling 5 per cent. The San Francisco-based bank reported weaker profit and revenue for the latest quarter than expected, with analysts citing lower trading fees and other miscellaneous items.
Bank of America fell 4.3 per cent despite reporting a stronger profit than analysts expected, with some consternation about the size of its upcoming expenses. Citigroup, which is in the midst of a turnaround under chair and chief executive Jane Fraser, fell 4.2 per cent following its own profit report.
Companies across industries need to report strong growth in profits to justify how high their stock prices have run recently. Analysts are looking for businesses across the S&P 500 to report earnings per share for the final three months of 2025 that are roughly 8 per cent higher than a year earlier, according to FactSet.
Biogen sank 5.2 per cent after the biotechnology company said it expects to take a hit to its profit for the fourth quarter of 2025 due to research and development expenses and other costs that it acquired.
The heaviest weights on the market were tech stocks, which gave back some of their huge gains made over recent years in the frenzy around AI technology. Nvidia fell 2.1 per cent and Broadcom sank 4.6 per cent.
Still, nearly as many stocks on Wall Street rose as fell, and the strongest forces keeping the S&P 500 from steeper losses were ExxonMobil and other oil companies.
ExxonMobil rose 3.5 per cent and Chevron climbed 2.7 per cent as the price of a barrel of benchmark US crude added 1.3 per cent to bring its gain for the year to more than 7 per cent.
Oil prices have rallied as protests have swept Iran, which is a member of the OPEC group that helps set crude prices. The protests could lead to disruptions in production and squeeze supplies of crude.
Besides the rise in oil prices, gold’s price also rose 0.9 per cent towards a record in another signal of nervousness across financial markets.
On the bond market, Treasury yields sank as investors sought investments seen as safer. Several reports on the US economy also came in mixed.
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One said that shoppers spent more at US retailers in November than economists expected. That could be an encouraging signal about the main engine of the US economy, but economists pointed to some concerning signals underneath the surface.
A separate report said prices rose modestly at the US wholesale level in November. It followed a report on Tuesday that said inflation at the US consumer level was close to economists’ expectations last month, though it remained above the Federal Reserve’s 2 per cent target.
With AP, Bloomberg
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