Banks, miners lift Australia shares; tech stocks track Wall Street peers lower

Australian shares edged higher on Wednesday, led by heavyweight miners and banks, while losses in tech companies tracking overnight Wall Street losses capped gains.

The S&P/ASX 200 index rose 0.2% to 7,080.80 as at 0040 GMT, after slipping as much as 0.2% earlier.

Overnight, Wall Street finished lower as investors dumped heavyweight growth stocks. Blue-chip tech giants dragged the Nasdaq Composite index about 2% lower, its biggest single-day decline in almost six weeks.

Australian tech stocks tracked these losses and fell nearly 2%, with heavyweight buy-now-pay-later firm Afterpay and WiseTech Global dropping 3.6% and 2.5%, respectively.

Banks were the top boosts to the benchmark, advancing as much as 0.7% to hit their highest since February last year.

Australia and New Zealand Banking Group jumped as much as 0.8%, after its first-half cash profit more than doubled from last year. It, however, declined about 2% later in the session.

The country's No. 2 lender Westpac Banking Corp was up as much as 0.4%, brushing off a civil proceeding initiated by the Australian corporate watchdog against the bank on allegations of insider trading.

Miners traded 0.2% lower after gaining about 0.4% earlier in the session, with gold miners being the biggest drags after bullion prices fell more than 1% overnight.

Gold miners were down 1.8%, with Newcrest Mining and Northern Star Resources shedding 1% and 2.8%, respectively.

Across the Tasman Sea, New Zealand's benchmark S&P/NZX 50 index fell as much as 1% to 12,787.44.

The top percentage losers in the benchmark were Fisher & Paykel Healthcare Corporation, down 2.31%, followed by Vista Group International and Mercury NZ, losing about 2% each.

Data showed unemployment rate in the country fell unexpectedly in the March quarter, as the economy created more jobs than forecast.