Market Wrap / worst day since Liberation Day

A turbulent week weighed on investor sentiment to close out Friday's session, with the S&P/ASX 200 posting its worst decline since Liberation Day in April last year.

Every sector closed in the red, with the index down 2.03% to 8,708.80 points. Over the course of the week, the index was down 1.81%.

Mining stocks witnessed some of the biggest declines of the session, with heavyweights BHP and Northern Star sliding 3.1% and 1.7% respectively.

Uranium players also came under significant selling pressure. Deep Yellow closed lower by 12% and Paladin was down 10.9% amid concerns AI capex may not spark a boom in nuclear power.

Rio Tinto shares fell after the miner walked away from a potential $300 billion merger with Glencore, slipping 0.1%. 

Elsewhere, the tech sector recorded weekly losses of 3% as Wisetech and Xero failed to recover from the downward momentum, dropping 4.7% and 0.4% each. 

Among reporting season earnings; REA Group posted a 24% fall in reported half year profit to $336.3 million, seeing shares slide 7.8%. Its parent company NewsCorp saw a 6% rise in quarterly revenue to US$2.36 billion dollars, recovering from an opening dip but not beating market downturn, finishing the day shy 5.4%. 

In other news, Web Travel confirmed its Spanish subsidiary is being audited by the country’s tax authority, which prompted a 29.5% collapse in the company’s shares.

The University of Michigan’s inflation expectations data is due from the US tonight, while Philip Morris International is set to release its half-year earnings.