ASX edges lower at the open; Northern Star sinks on guidance downgrade
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More news: Australian shares opened marginally lower on the first trading day of 2026, with tech stocks leading early losses.
The benchmark ASX 200 index was down 5.9 points, or 0.07%, to 8,708.4 at 10:30am AEDT. Five of the 11 sectoral indices were in negative territory.
Gold miner Northern Star Resources (-7.5%) was the worst performer on the ASX 200 after downgrading its FY26 production guidance. Fellow gold stocks Perseus Mining (-1.6%), Bellevue Gold (-1.5%) and Westgold Resources (1.2%) were also lower.
Meanwhile, Nickel Industries (+7.5%) was the top performer after South Korea's Sphere Corp acquired a 10% interest in its Excelsior Nickel Cobalt HPAL project.
Mesoblast (+3.5%) also rallied after announcing changes to its board.
Australian shares to slump on first trading day of 2026
The news: Australian shares are expected to fall in their first trading day of 2026 following a weak performance on Wall Street over New Year's Eve.
The numbers: Updated at 7:15am AEDT:
- ASX futures: down 28 points to 8,704
- Wall Street: Dow Jones down 0.63%, S&P 500 down 0.74% and Nasdaq down 0.76%
- Europe: CAC 40 down 0.23%, DAX up 0.57% and FTSE 100 down 0.09%
- Spot gold: down 0.43% to USD4,320 per ounce
- Oil prices: Brent down 0.78% to USD60.85/bbl and US WTI down 0.91% to USD57.42/bbl
- AUD: down 0.05% at 66.68 US cents
- Bitcoin: up 0.83% to USD88,250.
The context: US stocks performed poorly on New Year’s Eve, with all three major indices slumping over the day. Low volumes of trading could result in more erratic price swings than usual.
Precious metals have also fallen ahead of the new year break, with energy stocks expected to react to the drop in Brent crude prices.
Over the past 24 hours, the US decided to lower its anti-dumping tariffs on some Italian pasta brands. And China has decided to impose shock beef import tariffs above certain quotas, in a decision widely considered to be a significant blow for Australian exporters.
Over 100 Australian business executives have signed an open letter backing calls for a royal commission into the Bondi attacks, including ex-Telstra CEO David Thodey, former Reserve Bank governors Philip Lowe and Glenn Stevens, and James Packer.
