ASX Market Open: A little Chrissy cheer in shortened Week 52… and not much else | Dec 22

ASX today – Australian shares are heading up +0.5% to start the last week of the year, which will be a lot shorter than usual thanks to breaks over both Christmas Day and Boxing Day, and an earlier close on Wednesday.

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While the Santa Rally never arrived – no, it doesn’t count if it happens tomorrow – it’s at least a positive end to what has been a down December.

All three major U.S. indices are up, with the S&P gaining +0.9%, the Dow Jones advancing +0.4%, and the Nasdaq helped +1.4% higher by AI gains. So too Europe, where the Eurostoxx was +0.4% and the FTSE added +0.6%.

Should this get any better, a rally may well track into January and the early CY26 weeks, so it’s definitely still worth keeping an eye on; it may not mean extra Chrissy cash, but it will mean the next year is most interesting.

It would at least be more interesting than this week’s macro news: RBA meeting minutes come Tuesday, but they did nothing, so that will hold little.

Beyond that, there’s barely anything happening in wider thematics.

We’ll take a look at companies sneaking in news pre-Chrissy for excitement instead.

ASX stocks to watch

First up, IGO Ltd (ASX:IGO) has started building its new lithium plant at Greenbushes. The Chemical Grade Plant 3 will have a capacity of about 500,000 tonnes a year of spodumene concentrate and has already had ore fed recently.

Champion Iron (ASX:CIA) is looking to acquire Norwegian iron ore producer Rana Gruber in another overseas expansion. The deal will cost around US$289 million.

Elsewhere, Monadelphous has been selected to help Rio Tinto (ASX:RIO) build a “major link” at the Brockman Syncline iron development in Western Australia.

And, Eminence Minerals (ASX:EMA) has now wrapped its hearing with the Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Committee regarding two new Aboriginal sites near the Hamersley Iron Ore Project. Findings will come in early ’26.

Buck and ore

Now – in forex, the Oz dollar buys 66.1 U.S. cents.

Looking at commodities, all in the greenback,

Iron Ore has dropped back around -0.4%, to $104.50 a tonne in Singapore,

Brent Crude is fairly flat at $60.47/bbl,

Gold is at $4,350 an ounce, and,

US natgas futures gained +2%, to $3.98 per gigajoule.

That’s HotCopper’s Market Open, I’m Isaac McIntyre – good luck, happy trading.

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