THE share market opened 1 per cent lower, after falls on Wall Street sparked by weak employment figures.
At 10.15am AEST, the benchmark S&P/ASX200 index was down 39.8 points, or 0.93 per cent, at 4261.7 points, while the broader All Ordinaries index was down 39 points, or 0.9 per cent, at 4285.9.
Wall Street fell overnight after a disappointing June employment report from a payroll company, which traders said acted as a precursor to key employment data due out on Friday.
The Dow Jones industrial average fell 96.28 points, or 0.98 per cent, to 9774.02. The Standard & Poor's 500 index fell 1.01 per cent to 1030.71. The Nasdaq composite index lost 1.21 per cent, and closed at 2109.24.
Locally, resources stocks opened lower.
Rio Tinto was down $1.66, or 2.49 per cent, at $65.00 and BHP Billiton was down 67 cents, or 1.78 per cent, at $36.98.
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Fortescue Metals fell eight cents, or 1.94 per cent, to $4.04.
Late yesterday, the Australian Competition Tribunal ruled that BHP and Rio will not be forced to open up their main rail lines in Western Australia to smaller iron ore miners.
The matter may be headed for the Federal Court, with BHP and its opponent, Fortescue Metals, threatening to take the battle further.
Among the major banks, National Australia Bank was down 19 cents at $23.09, Westpac fell 18 cents to $21.05, ANZ lost 28 cents to $21.33 and Commonwealth was down 57 cents at $48.07.
IG Markets analyst Cameron Peacock said negative sentiment from the last quarter, in the US and locally, had fed into the new financial year.
"Obviously we had another last hour sell off in the US last night and that's clearly weighing on our market today," he said.
"There's a lot of negative sentiment around at the moment. The European debt concerns are continuing to weigh.
"There's a lot of scepticism about the foundations of the US economic recovery."
Mr Peacock said the release of weak employment data overnight didn't help sentiment.
He said there was some elements of good news, after US stocks got off to a reasonable start, following good news from Europe which suggested European banks were not doing as badly as feared.
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