Steve Daghlian

Absolutely.

And look, usually we'd look to the US market to give us an idea about how we might open locally the next day.

The US markets actually hit fresh record highs on

Friday, they rose quite strongly.

There was stronger-than-expected US data, which basically highlighted a more resilient labour market than expected.

In fact, there were close to twice as many jobs added in April as expected over in the United States, with the unemployment rate remaining steady at 4.3%.

But the reason for the declines locally today...

continues, as you pointed out, due to the US-Iran situation.

So President Trump this morning basically dismissed Iran's response to the US proposal for peace talks to end the war.

He basically said they were totally unacceptable.

Now, this post on social media from the president came at 6.15am this morning, around that time, Sydney time.

So we're one of the first markets to respond to the news and futures generally have been pointing to declines in overnight trade tonight.

Yes, energy stocks since the start of this year locally are still up a good 22%, outperforming pretty much every other area.

The materials locally today in Property Trust, they're both up as well, but only up by about a third of 1%.

And outside of those three sectors, all others are in the red.

Certainly none doing worse today than healthcare, which are down by 6.5%.

But outside of that, you've got financials, which are falling by about three quarters of a percent today.

Absolutely.

I mean, CSL today is having a bit of a shocker.

It's down around 16%.