Sydney, June 27, 2026, 10:45 AEST
Key points
- ASX 200 closed down for the holiday-shortened week, with miners giving up earlier gains.
- Banks and domestic sectors absorbed some of the losses as iron ore and metals weakened.
- Markets are split on what the Reserve Bank will do next after softer inflation but stronger jobs data.
- Investors are watching for China PMI numbers, comments from the RBA, and the early days of earnings guidance season.
Australian shares closed out a choppy week with miners dragging down the main index, even as buyers moved into local companies, healthcare stocks, and some tech names.
S&P/ASX 200 slips 0.7% for the week as materials lag
The S&P/ASX 200 fell about 0.7% this week, weighed down as the index dropped in most sessions before steadying Friday. Materials shares tried to bounce after sliding for six sessions. Moves mostly tracked commodity prices, not earnings. Iron ore was on pace for its seventh weekly drop—its worst streak since 2022. Several industrial metals also lost ground. Asx
BHP Group ASX:BHP, Rio Tinto ASX:RIO and Fortescue ASX:FMG came under pressure while other sectors held up. Breadth looked better than the headline index, with Australia’s top miners making up so much of the benchmark.
Australia’s new economic numbers sharpened the divergence in markets. Consumer inflation cooled more than markets forecast but jobs data stayed solid, leaving traders split over the Reserve Bank of Australia’s next move on rates this year. Investors stepped up buying in healthcare, retail, and tech stocks that react to rates, even as resource shares stayed weak with softer commodity prices.
Investors paid less attention to one point this week: aside from the top mining stocks, local sectors showed some resilience as rate uncertainty lingered. That points to a possible shift, with money moving into firms tied to Australian consumption rather than those linked to China’s industrial cycle. This change could stand out more if iron ore prices stay under their recent peaks.
Miners dragged on the market Thursday, taking the edge off gains in most other groups. Healthcare stocks like CSL ASX:CSL moved up, with retailers Wesfarmers ASX:WES and JB Hi-Fi ASX:JBH also trading higher. Still, the big resource names weighed on the index. Shares of Judo Capital ASX:JDO sank after the lender cut its earnings view, extending a string of negative surprises this week.
Friday offered some relief but it didn’t last. Gold stocks came back early, iron ore names climbed off lows, but most commodity markets kept falling. Market Index said the resources sector dropped nearly 10% after six losses in a row. Friday’s small bounce faded as the afternoon went on.
The stronger U.S. dollar is hitting Australia’s materials sector, Tony Sycamore at IG said, citing the negative link between the greenback and metal prices.
Rotation into local names may have gone “a little overdone,” Justin Lin, investment strategist at Global X ETFs Australia, said. Lin added that investors were reassessing where commodity-linked earnings land. News
Chinese manufacturing numbers, RBA signals, and early earnings updates are on the radar, with reporting season near. But the local market could move more on where commodity prices go next, after miners saw one of their worst weeks of the year. Australian shares may take their cue from whether the slide in resources can pause, not so much from domestic data.