Australian shares are poised to fall in line with overseas losses as semiconductor stocks plunged amid a heightening focus on US trade policy and a potential further deterioration in US-China economic relations.
The June jobs report is to be released at 11.30am AEST.
The Nasdaq Composite was 2.8 per cent lower at the close in New York. The S&P 500 shed 1.4 per cent. In contrast, the Dow Jones was 0.6 per cent higher.
Semiconductor stocks, which have been key drivers of the push to repeated record highs for the Nasdaq and S&P 500, dropped on reports that the Biden administration was poised to ramp limits on exports of key tech components to China. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Sector Index fell 6.8 per cent.
Nvidia slumped 6.6 per cent, taking direction from a near 11 per cent drop in Dutch chipmaker ASML. The drop saw Nvidia’s market cap fall back below $US3 trillion.
Among other techs, AMD shed 10.2 per cent, Arm Holdings lost 9.6 per cent, Qualcomm 8.6 per cent, Broadcom 7.9 per cent, Super Micro 6.9 per cent, Dell 6.8 per cent, and Micron Tech 6.3 per cent.
The selling also hit the rest of the magnificent seven with Meta down 5.7 per cent and Tesla falling 3.1 per cent. Amazon, Apple, Alphabet and Microsoft lost between 2.6 per cent and 1.3 per cent.
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