Live: ASX to open higher after Wall Street rallies

A much shorter than usual diary for this week — basically there’s nothing much apart from some second tier US data in coming days.

None of them worth as much as a keystroke.

Fortunately, the RBA has come up with a stocking stuffer.

It will release its board minutes (Tuesday) from earlier this month.

But don’t rip through it too quickly, savour it like a Christmas feast, as the next data drops will be house prices on January 2 and the monthly inflation indicator out on January 8. Sigh.

After enduring its worst week since before the November presidential election, Wall Street at least finished Friday on a positive note.

The big three indices — the S&P 500, the Dow and the Nasdaq — all gained more than 1% after marginally weaker-than-expected inflation data eased concerns about future interest rate cuts from the Fed.

Before the Personal Consumption Expenditure (PCE) Price Index — the Fed’s preferred measure of inflation — came in showing a 2.4% rise in November, the market had glumly pushed back its expectations of the next cut to December 2025.

It’s now priced in for March, with a third cut in the series before October.

The late session surge looks like flowing through to the local market with the ASX 200 futures up 0.2%.

That will be a relief given the index dropped almost 3% last week, its worst weekly performance since April.

European markets missed the inflation news and closed lower, with the Eurostoxx index weighed down by the capitulation of the Danish drug maker, Novo Nordisk (-21%) on disappointing results on its next generation anti-obesity drug.

President-elect Donald Trump’s demands that Europe buy more US gas and oil, or face tariffs didn’t help the sentiment either.

Oil prices were little changed on Friday, ending the week down around 2.5%.

Gold was also a beneficiary of the soft US inflation data gaining around 1% on the day but was 0.9% down on the week.

Bitcoin remained under $US100,000 after slipping last week on Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell’s comments that the bank is not allowed to own any digital currency, nor was he looking at a change to the law to make it possible.

Good morning and welcome to another week on the ABC markets and finance blog.

Stephen Letts from ABC business team limbering up for a blow-by-blow coverage of the day’s events, where every post is hopefully a winner, but none should be construed as financial advice.

In short, futures trading points to a 0.2% rise on the ASX 200 this morning.

It is perhaps not a Christmas miracle, but somewhat lucky nonetheless there will be any trading at all today.

The ASX’s CHESS software crashed on Friday meaning the transactions going back to Wednesday couldn’t be cleared, leaving them in limbo until someone figured out how to reboot the 30-year-old system late Sunday afternoon.

Fingers crossed for today.

As always, the game’s afoot, so let’s get blogging.