Australian shares to open higher on Wall Street advance

The news: The Australian sharemarket is poised to open slightly higher after major stock indices on Wall Street advanced on hopes of less aggressive tariffs by the incoming Trump administration.

The numbers: Updated at 7:25am AEDT:

• ASX futures: up 15 points or 0.18% at 8,263 points
• Wall Street: Dow Jones down 0.15%, S&P 500 up 0.47%, Nasdaq up 1.04%.
• Europe: FTSE 100 up 0.31%, CAC 40 up 2.24%, DAX up 1.56%
• Spot gold: down 0.23% to USD2,634.02 per ounce
• Oil prices: Brent down 0.33% to USD76.26/barrel, US WTI down 0.64% to USD73.49/bbl
• AUD: up 0.43% at 62.40 US cents
• Bitcoin: up 3.85% to USD102,167

The context: All three main US indices rose to more than one-week highs, boosted by a report suggesting the incoming administration is focused on imposing tariffs only in certain sectors deemed critical to national or economic security, which Trump later refuted. Semiconductor stocks also rallied after Microsoft's plan to invest USD80 billion to develop AI-enabled data centres, as well as Foxconn's forecast-beating fourth-quarter revenue.

What to Watch: Building approvals data for November, and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s keynote address at the CES trade show in Las Vegas.