It might be Wednesday, or 'hump' day, but there wasn't much soaring on the ASX today.
The indices were smashed across the board, with the S&P/ASX 200 (Index: ^AXJO) (ASX: XJO) and S&P/ASX 300 (Index: ^XKO) (ASX: XKO) both down 1%, although the S&P/ASX Small Ordinaries (Index: ^AXSO) (ASX: XSO) managed to 'only' drop by 0.5%.
These six stocks came in for a beating from investors:
WDS Limited (ASX: WDS) dropped 31% to 20 cents, after the contractor released another earnings downgrade, going from a small profit to a big loss. We wrote about it in more detail here.
Unilife Corporation (ASX: UNS) fell 16.2% to 54.5 cents. Unilife develops injectable drug delivery systems and overnight reported a loss of US$22.3 million for the September quarter, around double the previous corresponding period. Still, management were upbeat in the quarterly report.
Atlas Iron Limited (ASX: AGO) was hammered down 14.3% to 21 cents. The miner has now lost 82% of its share price in the past year, thanks mainly to the falling iron ore price, and worries that the company is now operating at a loss.
Another junior iron ore miner, BC Iron Limited (ASX: BCI) followed suite, falling 10.4% to 77.5 cents, and like Atlas, has seen its share price crumble by more than 80% since November 2013. We shared our view on the iron ore stocks in detail in this article.
Imdex Limited (ASX: IMD) dropped 9.1% to 50 cents. Imdex provides drilling fluids and survey instrumentation to the resources, energy, water and civil engineering industries. Perhaps thrown out with the mining services (WDS above) bath water, Imdex reported a positive first quarter in October, with revenues up 10%, and earnings up 12% over the previous year. Mining services is not a great sector to be in at the moment, even if your company is reporting positive results it seems.
Last but not least was McAleese Ltd (ASX: MCS), which saw its shares drop 8.8% to 36.5 cents. The transport company has seen its shares drop 77% since November 2013, and investors were clearly not impressed by the company's announcement yesterday of a $3 million investment in Heavy Haulage Australia, in exchange for a 50% share.
