Craigs Investment Partners investment director Mark Lister said investors across the board would likely be happy with the day’s result given the ongoing volatility.
“It’s been a very volatile week. The United States, they’ve got one day to go but they’re down 3.6% for the week, which is pretty rough,” Lister said.
“We’re down as well. We’re holding up better than the US market but we’re always going to follow those international trends and when you’ve got people nervous about tariffs and so forth, and what they might mean for global activity in terms of slowing things down, then we go along for the ride.”
In more positive news, KMD Brands had its share price rise by 2.7% to 38c, up 1c with 316,324 shares trading hands to the value of $119,321.50.
Lister said now that reporting season is behind us and there are no major economic releases for a period, the market is in “a bit of a lull”.
“I kind of feel like we’re just going to be beholden to some of those big global moves.”
Another stock of interest was Spark, with its share price falling by 0.67% to $2.21, with 4,940,714 shares trading hands to the value of $11,094,232.12.
“There’ll always be someone out there who will take a positive view on a company when it’s been beaten up and fallen heavily, but it’s difficult to know where the share price is headed from here,” Lister said.
Spark shares have fallen sharply since the company announced a 78% fall in its first-half net profit to $35m and reduced its full-year operating earnings guidance.
Wall Street stocks resumed their retreat Thursday, falling hard ahead of key US jobs data as markets shrugged off US President Donald Trump’s latest moves to soften tariff actions.
Trump on Thursday unveiled a temporary rollback to steep tariffs targeting Canada and Mexico, but the shift was not enough to spark a change in stock market activity.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished down 1% at 42,579.08, after spending the entire session in negative territory.
The broad-based S&P 500 slumped 1.8% to 5738.52, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index sank 2.6% to 18,069.26.
Art Hogan of B. Riley Wealth Management said the uncertainty around trade policy is “affecting the real economy”, dragging down consumer sentiment and business investment.
“The longer that goes on, the more the economy slows,” he said.
Large tech firms were among the bigger losers Thursday, including Netflix, down 8.5%, Tesla, falling 5.6% and Nvidia, sliding 5.7%.
– Additional reporting AFP
Tom Raynel is a multimedia business journalist for the Herald, covering small business and retail.
