At noon on Wednesday the benchmark S&P/ASX200 index was down 6.4 points, or 0.09 per cent, to 7023.4. The broader All Ordinaries was down 8.5 points, or 0.1 per cent, to 7271.2.
With the ASX trading around a two-month high, traders may have been treading carefully ahead of the evening's US consumer price index print for July.
That inflation read will likely be a key consideration in how aggressively the US Federal Reserve hikes interest rates and higher interest rates make riskier equities look less less attractive by comparison.
"If we get a CPI with a nine handle, the market probably won't like that and we'll probably get a move to the downside," Angus Geddes, founder and chief executive of Fat Prophets, told Ausbiz TV on Wednesday morning.
Tech stocks were down 3.5 per cent, putting them on track for their worst session since June 14, after overnight losses for their counterparts on Wall Street.
Computershare had retreated 7.2 per cent after the Melbourne-based stock transfer company announced full-year earnings that included a "disappointing" $6.3 million loss in its mortgage services business.
Elsewhere in the sector, Xero was down 2.9 per cent, Wisetech Global had fallen 1.2 per cent and Afterpay owner Block had dropped 5.3 per cent.
Among financials, Commonwealth Bank was down 1.0 per cent to $100.28 after Australia's second-biggest company by market cap announced a better-than-expected full-year cash profit of $9.59 billion, up 11 per cent from a year earlier.
"It is a challenging time but we remain optimistic a path can be found to navigate through these economic conditions," chief executive Matt Comyn said in a statement.
The other big banks were higher, with ANZ up 2.3 per cent to $23.22, NAB rising 1.1 per cent to $30.14 and Westpac up 0.5 per cent to $22.01.
In the heavyweight mining sector, BHP and Rio Tinto were up 0.6 per cent, to $39.04 and $99.97, respectively, while Fortescue Metals was up 0.3 per cent to $19.01.
In healthcare, Imugene was up 10.2 per cent to 29.75c after the Sydney biotech announced US researchers had dosed another breast cancer patient with its experimental CHECKvacc, a poxvirus genetically modified to fight cancer.
CSL had dropped 1.4 per cent to $292.90.
Meanwhile, the Australian dollar was buying 69.63 US cents, from 69.71 US cents on Tuesday.
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