ASX to open lower on first trading day of 2025
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The news: The Australian sharemarket is set to fall at the start of the first trading day of 2025, after slumping to consecutive declines in the previous two sessions.
The numbers: Updated at 8:30am AEDT:
- ASX futures: down 77 points or 0.9% at 8,148 points
- Wall Street: Dow Jones down 0.07%, S&P 500 down 0.43%, Nasdaq down 0.9%
- Europe: FTSE 100 up 0.64%, CAC 40 up 0.92%, DAX down 0.38%
- Spot gold: up 0.69% to USD2,624.50 per ounce
- Oil prices: Brent up 0.25% to USD74.83/barrel, US WTI up 1.24% to USD71.87/bbl
- AUD: down 0.5% at 61.89 US cents
- Bitcoin: up 0.99% to USD94,645
The context: The ASX is poised to open lower for the third straight session, tracking declines on Wall Street and across Europe earlier this week.
Those markets were mostly closed on New Year's Day, after Wall Street indices extended losses on 31 December, the final trading day of 2024.
What to watch: Chinese media group Caixin will release its monthly purchasing managers index (PMI) data at 12:30pm AEDT, with traders looking for signals of growth from the world's second largest economy.
On Wednesday, figures released by China's National Bureau of Statistics showed that the country's official manufacturing PMI eased to 50.1 in December, compared to 50.3 in the previous reading and below a market consensus of 50.3. The NBS non-manufacturing PMI rose to 52.2 in December versus November’s 50.0 figure, in line with average estimates.
In the US, new unemployment claims and ISM manufacturing PMI data is due to be released on Saturday morning AEDT.
The source: Bloomberg
