The Australian share market has lost almost 2 per cent on Friday, with travel stocks falling as lockdown woes re-emerge in Europe.
At 10:45am AEDT, the ASX 200 was down 0.5 per cent.
It ended the day down 1.7 per cent at 7,279.
The day's biggest loser was Appen, which dived 18 per cent after Macquarie downgraded its rating from "neutral" to "underperform".
The loss was the data company's biggest since August, when it posted lower profit than expected.
The hardest hit sector was travel, including Qantas (-5.3pc), Corporate Travel Management (-5.9pc) and Flight Centre (7pc).
Those stocks have been taking a hit this week because of increasing COVID restrictions in some parts of Europe and a worrying new COVID variant that has emerged in southern Africa, which have dampened expectations about a boom in global travel.
Italy is currently tightening social distancing measures while Germany is holding off for now.
But that did not hit the European markets overnight. The major indices there were all up around 0.3 per cent.
Minutes from the European central bank meeting were in focus on markets there.
"Unsurprisingly, Governing Council members generally agreed that the "hump" in inflation will subside next year, although supply bottlenecks will last longer than originally anticipated," ANZ noted this morning.
"It is of the view that a sustained rise in price pressures will require more rapid wage growth."
On the flip side, miners included St Barbara, Evolution and Newcrest performed with gains of between 0.8 and 2.2 per cent.
Wall Street was closed for US holidays.
The Australian currency was down against most of the majors. It lost 0.1 per cent on the greenback to take it to 71.87 US cents.
