Australian shares to open higher after tech bounce on Wall Street

The news: The Australian sharemarket is set to open higher after gains on Wall Street as technology stocks partly recovered from sharp losses in the previous session amid bargain hunting by investors.

The numbers: Updated at 7:25am AEDT:

• ASX futures: up 34 points or 041% at 8,399 points
• Wall Street: Dow Jones up 0.36%, S&P 500 up 0.96%, Nasdaq up 2.01%
• Europe: FTSE 100 up 0.35%, CAC 40 down 0.12%, DAX up 0.70%
• Spot gold: up 0.85% to USD2,764.14 per ounce
• Oil prices: Brent up 0.69% to USD77.61/barrel, US WTI up 0.98% to USD73.89/bbl
• AUD: down 0.62% at 62.53 US cents
• Bitcoin: down 0.16% to USD102,045.70

The context: The Nasdaq led the gains on Wall Street, with AI chipmaker Nvidia up nearly 7% a day after the tech sell-off that followed Chinese startup DeepSeek's launch of AI models. Investors are awaiting quarterly results from Apple, Microsoft and other companies this week, while the Federal Reserve is widely expected to hold its lending rate steady in its first interest-rate decision of the year on Thursday AEDT. Locally, the focus will be on December quarter inflation data that could influence the Reserve Bank’s rate outloook.

What to watch: December quarter CPI data at 11:30 am, and quarterly reports from Whitehaven Coal, Atlas Arteria, Perseus Mining and Boss Energy.