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PERTH - The Australian stock market tumbled in one of its biggest falls since soon after the terrorist attacks on the United States in 2001.
Today's steep drop followed steep falls on Wall Street and weak metal prices overnight.
At the close, the benchmark S&P/ASX200 index was down 175.6 points to 6082.9, while the all ordinaries shed 174.1 points to 6127.3.
At 1615 AEST on the Sydney Futures Exchange, the September share price index contract was 180 points lower at 6061, on a volume of 37,827 contracts.
CMC Markets senior dealer Josh Whiting said the Australian stock market bore the brunt of a strong sell down after falls in the United States overnight.
"Thursday night's steep fall in the US and European markets coupled with weakness in metals prices shocked the local market into free-fall at today's open," Mr Whiting said.
"Although there was a modest recovery towards the close, many investors were likely to be nursing sore heads and re-evaluating where support might be going into another nervous offshore trading session."
The Dow Jones industrial average retreated 311.50 points to 13,473.57, the Standard & Poor's 500 Index lost 35.43 points to 1,482.66 and the Nasdaq fell 48.83 points to 2,599.34.
Locally, the big miners were weaker with BHP Billiton dropping A$1.33 to A$35.97 and rival Rio Tinto losing A$3.28 to A$90.60.
Zinc and lead miner Zinifex lost 59 cents to A$19.10 after the company delivered production broadly in line with expectations for its fourth quarter, while annual production dropped by five per cent.
The energy sector was in negative territory, with Woodside dropping A$1.43 to A$43.01, Santos losing 39 cents to A$13.45 and Oil Search retreating 12 cents to A$3.88.
Woodside today gave the green light to the development of its A$11.2 billion Pluto liquefied natural gas (LNG) project in Western Australia.
The media sector was weaker, with News Corp dropping 25 cents to A$26.40, its non-voting shares losing 26 cents to A$24.61, PBL falling 48 cents to A$18.26 and Fairfax dipping six cents to A$4.91.
The Seven Network shed 49 cents to A$10.91 after the Federal Court rejected claims that its pay television arm C7 was driven out of business when it was deprived of pay TV rights to the AFL and NRL in 2000.
Lion Nathan dropped 36 cents to A$8.45 despite the Trans-Tasman brewer tipping an operating profit of A$250 million to A$260 million for fiscal 2007 as the beer market continues to grow.
AWB shed 13 cents to A$3.40 after the wheat exporter said new export marketing arrangements meant it would be too costly and complex to demerge its international arm, AWB International.
The big banks were weaker, with ANZ retreating 61 cents to A$28.17, the Commonwealth Bank losing A$1.21 to A$54.57, National Australia Bank shedding A$1.28 to A$38.20 and Westpac giving up 39 cents to A$25.71.
The retailers were weaker, with Woolworths losing 66 cents to A$26.24, Coles dropping 53 cents to A$14.29, David Jones giving up four cents to A$5.63 and Harvey Norman tumbling eight cents to A$5.16.
The spot gold price was lower and at 1626 AEST was trading at USA$664.50 an ounce, down USA$11.70 an ounce on yesterday's local close.
The gold miners were weaker with Newcrest falling 85 cents to A$24.75, Lihir losing 11 cents to A$3.02 and Newmont dropping 12 cents to A$4.81.
IM Medical was the most traded stock on the market, with 162 million shares changing hands collectively worth A$6.2 million.
IM Medical added 0.6 cents to close at 3.9 cents.
Preliminary market turnover reached 2.8 billion shares worth A$12.1 billion, with 239 stocks, 1,183 down and 233 unchanged.
- AAP