Welcome to your five-minute recap of the trading day and how the experts saw it.

The numbers: The Australian sharemarket dropped by 0.5 per cent after falling commodity prices drove resource shares significantly lower, despite strong tech stocks briefly lifting the index into positive territory.

The ASX 200 closed at 6,594.5 points, with energy stocks falling by 5.8 per cent and mining stocks down 5 per cent. Iron ore, oil, copper and gold prices all declined over the day.

The major miners suffered, with Rio Tinto down 7.4 per cent and BHP dropping 5.6 per cent. In the energy sector, Woodside and Santos were more than 6 per cent lower, while Beach Energy declined 8 per cent.

Tech stocks countered resource losses, rising by 3.1 per cent, with Xero lifting 6.7 per cent.

The lifters: Megaport 14%, Life360 13.9%, Zip Co 12.8%

The laggards: St Barbara -9.5%, Coronado Global -9.5%, Champion Iron -8.7%

The lowdown: Markets opened after US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil prices dropped below $US100 a barrel for the first time since May early on Wednesday morning, with Brent crude oil also dropping by over 9 per cent.

Recession fears impacting commodity demand caused the drop, despite supply constraints from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and subsequent sanctions raising oil prices.

The Australian dollar felt the pinch of the commodity crunch, dropping further to $US68¢ to reach its lowest point in two years.