A double digit slump in Coca-Cola Amatil shares has been the major fall in a declining market.

The food and beverage manufacturer had dropped 13 per cent to $9.92 by 10:45am (AEST), after it flagged a 15 per cent decline in first-half profits compared to the same time a year earlier.

The company's new managing director Alison Watkins has just finished a review of the company in her first six weeks in the job.

"At the full year result in February, we highlighted that we were concerned by the generally weak consumer confidence and spending environment in Australia and that we faced challenges in Indonesia with substantial cost inflation," she said in a statement.

"The group has experienced comparative weakness in both Australian beverages and Indonesia and at this stage expects first half 2014 Group EBIT before significant items to decline by around 15 per cent over the prior comparable period. At this early stage of the year, expectations would be for challenging trading conditions to continue."

However, in a rare bright spot in Coca-Cola Amatil's statement, it said that its troubled SPC Ardmona fruit processing business may break even for the first time in years.

Elsewhere on the market, most sectors have been sold off on a very negative lead from Wall Street - New York's Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 1.6 per cent overnight.

In response, Australia's two biggest miners were off just either side of 1 per cent, while the major banks were all down around two-thirds of a per cent.

Retailers were also lower, with JB Hi-Fi among the worst, off 2 per cent.

The biggest US stock falls were on the technology focused Nasdaq, which slumped 3.1 per cent - its worst one-day fall since 2011.

The Australian market is holding up better largely due to the relative absence of technology-related stocks.

The few that there are were being hit hard: Carsales was off 4.3 per cent to $10.43; Wotif was down 2.6 per cent; and REA Group was 2.1 per cent lower.

The Australian dollar has also lost ground since jumping on yesterday's positive jobs numbers - it was worth 93.75 US cents.