Australian shares flat after Wall Street sell-off

Australian shares are poised for a sluggish start on Tuesday after a sell-off on Wall Street as tech stocks dragged.

The ASX SPI 200 futures were flat at 6,596, by 6: 45 am AEST.

The ASX 200 closed up 127 points on Monday, or 1.9 per cent, to 6,706, extending gains to a third session.

The Australian dollar was down by 0.4 per cent to 69.10 US cents.

The US stock market closed lower on Monday, after oscillating earlier in the session, with weakness in interest-rate sensitive megacaps such as Amazon.com, Microsoft and AlphabetGoogle among the worst performers.

Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at CFRA Research, said the reason for lack of direction this week and next week is because investors are looking for what is going to happen in the second quarter.

The three indexes are on course to notch two straight quarterly declines for the first time since 2015.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell by 62.42 points, or 0.2 per cent, to 31,438. The S&P 500 lost 11.63 points, or 0.3 per cent, to 3,900. The Nasdaq Composite dropped by 93.05 points, or 0.8 per cent, to 11,514.

Among the 11 major sectors of the S&P 500, eight ended up in negative territory. Consumer discretionary suffered the largest percentage loss. Energy stocks were the winners, gaining 2.8 per cent on the day.

Shares of retail stock trading platform Robinhood Markets increased 14.0 per cent after media reports said Goldman Sachs changed the stock to neutral to sell.

They also appear set to post losses for June, which would mark three consecutive down months for the tech-heavy Nasdaq, its longest losing streak since 2015.

The S&P was expected to report its fifth worst year-to-date decline since 1962, as of Friday, according to Stoval.

He said that every time the SPX went up by more than 20 per cent in a year, it fell by an average of 11 per cent starting relatively early in the new year.

The decline started in the first half, but got back to normal before the year was out.

The market could surprise us this year, because there is no guarantee that it will happen this year. Rising oil prices helped put energy stocks out front with economically sensitive smallcaps and semiconductors and transports out of the market.

Brent crude was up 1.9 per cent US 115.24 per barrel, while West Texas crude was up 1.9 per cent to US 109.70 per barrel.

The pan-European STOXX 600 index gained 0.5 pc along with Germany s DAX 0.5 pc and Britain s FTSE 0.7 pc in Europe.