First thing first, yes the ASX will be open today – the Aussie bourse was in serious danger of being closed through December 23 after a power outage last Friday, but engineers had discovered the faults by Sunday evening.

The issue, the market operator said, meant any trades made from Wednesday had not been settled. They will now be processed today after the market opens.

(Basically, it boiled down to someone figuring out how to reboot a 30-year old system.)

Now, when the market does swing open in the build-up to Christmas, it will actually start green, according to ASX 200 futures; up 0.35% at least.

Australia’s green Monday follows a tick-up in the U.S. towards Wall Street’s close last Friday; things had been dipping hard in the U.S. through Week 50 – the Dow Jones and S&P 500 even slumped to historic lows – but sentiment turned dovish as the Christmas season truly descended on December 20.

Inflation data helped the bump up too, with U.S. investors buoyed by the fact that November’s PCE index had shown a 2.4% year-over-over increase; still slightly below expectations, but taken as relatively positive in the general scheme of things recently.

Back home, today is the last full trading day before a string of disrupted days: Tomorrow will see the ASX close early for Christmas Eve before the Aussie bourse is totally closed on Christmas Day and then also Boxing Day.

Christmas slowdown or no, there are still some Australian miners working right through the holidays, including Arrow Minerals (ASX:AMD), which has expanded its high-grade bauxite discovery in Niagara, and CZR Resources (ASX:CZR) which slightly delayed its Robe Mesa Iron Project sale to Miracle Iron Resources.

HotCopper investors are also closely watching Black Cat Syndicate (ASX:BC8) after the company poured its first gold at its restarted Paulsens Gold Operation.

Elsewhere, investment bank Jarden plans to pitch a new index that would combine the Australian Securities Exchange and the New Zealand Stock Exchange into one trans-Tasman giant to attract more global capital.

We also expect the RBA’s December 2024 meeting minutes tomorrow at 11.30am Sydney time as one last pre-Chrissy present for the economy.

Looking at forex, the Aussie dollar is buying 62.5 US cents.

To commodities, which are in the greenback,

Iron Ore has dropped 1.53% to $100.25 a tonne in Singapore,

Brent Crude is trading at $72.94,

Gold is trading at $2,641 per ounce, and, 

US natgas futures are at $3.74 per gigajoule.

That’s Market Open, I’m Isaac McIntyre, stick with us for HotCopper’s Market Update.