Australia stocks lower at close of trade; S&P/ASX 200 down 1.37%

Investing.com – Australia stocks were lower after the close on Wednesday, as losses in the IT, Gold and A-REITs sectors led shares lower.

At the close in Sydney, the S&P/ASX 200 lost 1.37%.

The best performers of the session on the S&P/ASX 200 were Medibank Private Ltd (ASX:MPL), which rose 1.68% or 0.06 points to trade at 3.63 at the close. Meanwhile, Pointsbet Holdings Ltd (ASX:PBH) added 1.14% or 0.01 points to end at 0.89 and Qbe Insurance Group Ltd (ASX:QBE) was up 1.02% or 0.15 points to 14.84 in late trade.

The worst performers of the session were Kogan.com Ltd (ASX:KGN), which fell 9.33% or 0.49 points to trade at 4.76 at the close. Gold Road Resources Ltd (ASX:GOR) declined 8.44% or 0.17 points to end at 1.79 and Healius Ltd (ASX:HLS) was down 6.33% or 0.11 points to 1.55.

Falling stocks outnumbered advancing ones on the Sydney Stock Exchange by 779 to 364 and 377 ended unchanged.

The S&P/ASX 200 VIX, which measures the implied volatility of S&P/ASX 200 options, was up 2.10% to 11.47 a new 1-month high.

Gold Futures for February delivery was down 0.07% or 1.40 to $2,072.00 a troy ounce. Elsewhere in commodities trading, Crude oil for delivery in February fell 0.37% or 0.26 to hit $70.12 a barrel, while the March Brent oil contract fell 0.34% or 0.26 to trade at $75.63 a barrel.

AUD/USD was unchanged 0.07% to 0.68, while AUD/JPY rose 0.10% to 96.08.

The US Dollar Index Futures was down 0.09% at 101.80.