Rise and Shine: Everything you need to know before the ASX opens
Good morning! Here’s everything you need to know before the ASX flings open its doors and begins trading today.
Good morning everyone and welcome to Rise and Shine on Thursday, December 11, 2025. Here’s what you should know before the ASX opens today…
At 7am AEST Thursday, ASX futures were up 0.5%, pointing to a strong open.
Here’s what went down overnight....
Wall Street rises after Fed cut
Wall Street ended Wednesday higher after the Fed Reserve cut rates by 25bp, exactly as expected.
The Dow added 1.22%, the S&P rose 0.77% and the Nasdaq drifted 0.43% higher.
| STOCK INDICES | Value | Change |
| ASX 200 | 8,579 | -0.08% |
| S&P 500 | 6,893 | 0.77% |
| Dow Jones | 48,141 | 1.22% |
| Nasdaq Comp | 23,678 | 0.43% |
| Russell 2000 | 2,552 | 1.00% |
| Euro Stoxx 50 | 5,708 | -0.18% |
| UK FTSE | 9,656 | 0.14% |
| German DAX | 24,130 | -0.13% |
| French CAC | 8,023 | -0.37% |
Bond yields eased, the US dollar softened, and the Australian dollar pushed to a three-month high, because rate cuts almost always translate into a weaker USD.
Intel fell more than 3% after fresh allegations that its chips found their way into Russian weapons.
Meanwhile Oracle, which will report its earnings in the next hour or so, has become Wall Street’s unofficial AI stress test, with traders seemingly giving more weight to its numbers than to the Fed meeting itself.
A divided Fed cuts rate
The Fed delivered the expected 25bp cut, taking the funds rate to 3.50–3.75%, but the vote was the real story: 9–3, the most divided since 2019.
Two regional presidents - Goolsbee and Schmid - wanted no cut.
One governor, wanted a bigger cut.
The dot plot added even more ambiguity.
While the median projection implies one more cut in 2026, the underlying distribution tells the truth:
- Only four officials actually expect that.
- Seven expect no cuts at all.
- Four see two cuts.
- Four see even more.
- Six didn’t agree with Wednesday’s cut in the first place.
This is a committee that spent two days in a room and emerged with 19 different opinions.
Powell did his best to smooth the edges. He insisted: “I don’t think a rate hike is anybody’s base case right now…”.
He later added: “We’re well-positioned to see how the economy evolves.”
A statement which, translated into the English language, means: we genuinely don’t know yet.
Copper squeezes higher, gold eyes US$5,000
Copper surged again toward its record US$11,771/t as inventories remain critically tight.
Up 30% year-to-date, copper is doing what equities only pretend to: rallying on fundamentals.
Gold’s backdrop was even more interesting.
Bank of America strategist Michael Widmer summed it up neatly, calling gold “overbought but underinvested.”
That paradox reflects positioning: huge flows into 2025’s fear trade, but still low institutional allocation.
Widmer argued that bull markets end when conditions change - and “we don’t see that.”
He projects gold could hit US$5,000/oz by 2026 if demand tracks its long-term average growth rate.
What’s happening today
Today brings ABS unemployment data at 11:30am AEDT, a key input into the RBA’s “not dovish yet, thank you” posture.
Markets will be watching whether labour softness in the US is echoed locally, or whether Australia remains a global outlier.
Myer and Rubicon hold AGMs, offering a read-through on consumer resilience and mining capex respectively.
ASX traders will also spend most of the morning dissecting Jerome Powell’s comments line by line, looking for anything the algos might have missed.
The futures market, for the moment, says risk-on.
Commodity/forex/crypto market prices
| Price (US) | Move | |
| Gold / ounce | $4,224.55 | 0.39% |
| Silver / ounce | $61.20 | 0.91% |
| Iron ore / tonne | $106.66 | 0.35% |
| Nickel / tonne | $14,665 | -0.58% |
| Copper / pound | $10,669 | 1.68% |
| Zinc / tonne | $3,082 | -0.34% |
| Lithium carbonate 99.5% Min China Spot / tonne | $13,087 | -0.05% |
| Oil (WTI) / barrel | $58.87 | 1.06% |
| Oil (Brent) / barrel | $62.54 | 0.96% |
| AUD/USD | $0.6673 | 0.31% |
| Bitcoin | $93,034 | 0.37% |
What got you talking
Also in the news…
Health Check: CogState (ASX:CGS) suffers a nasty share price head knock, but its future ‘has never looked brighter’.
Biocurious: How lung imager Cyclopharm (ASX:CYC) is breathing new life into an old device.
Precision Points: As liquidity flies, don’t chase a hot market to the last derivative.
Why Dimerix (ASX:DXB) is sparking a major push into Asia-Pacific’s biotech boom.
Resources Top 5: Alchemy Resources (ASX:ALY) sparks up on high-grade Valley Bore iron ore results.
Trading halts
Alchemy Resources (ASX:ALY) – further assay results
Great Boulder Resources (ASX:GBR) – drilling update
Iris Metals (ASX:IR1) – cap raise
St Barbara (ASX:SBM) – Simberi transaction & expansion study
Strata Minerals (ASX:SMX) – cap raise & acquisition
WIN Metals (ASX:WIN) – cap raise
At Stockhead, we tell it like it is. While Alchemy Resources is a Stockhead advertiser, it did not sponsor this article.
This article does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.
Originally published as Rise and Shine: Everything you need to know before the ASX opens
