ASX set to open higher despite Venezuela strikes

16 hours ago 14

By Staff Reporters

January 5, 2026 — 8.53am

The Australian sharemarket is set to open higher despite dramatic events in Venezuela over the weekend, with futures pointing to an upward shift as global markets launch into the first full trading week of the new year.

The ASX is expected to gain 0.13 per cent on Monday after clawing back early losses in its first trading session of 2026 on Friday and start the new year in positive territory on the back of optimism for energy companies and banks.

The ASX is expected to rise after clawing back early losses to close ahead last week.

The Australian dollar was trading slightly higher at around 66.82 US cents on Monday morning.

Overseas, the first trading week of the year could shake the US stock market out of its winter holiday slumber as investors parse the rapid developments in Venezuela while monthly jobs data looms.

Stocks slid in the final session of 2025, with the benchmark S&P 500 falling into a monthly loss for December. But the index still climbed more than 16 per cent in 2025, its third straight year of double-digit percentage gains, while the Cboe Volatility index was just above its lows for the year.

Trading volumes were thin at the end of 2025, but the new year could get off to an eventful start.

After the weekend’s events, when US forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and US President Donald Trump said the country would be under temporary American control, investors said such developments in the oil-rich South American country raised the concerns around geopolitical risks, and that any oil price volatility would ripple through assets.

Investors also await more drama with a US Supreme Court decision looming on Trump’s tariffs, along with his choice of a new Federal Reserve chair. The US corporate earnings season is also around the corner.

In the first session of 2026 on Friday, the S&P 500 posted a slim gain as semiconductor shares rallied.

Though the benchmark is near record highs, it is hovering around its late-October level, said Matthew Maley, chief market strategist at Miller Tabak.

“The market is looking for direction,” Maley said. “We break out of these ranges and that’s going to give people either a lot of confidence or a lot of concern, depending on which way it breaks.”

The employment data due on Friday could provide a jolt either way. Concerns over weakness in the labour market prompted the Fed to lower interest rates at each of its last three meetings of 2025, as the US central bank juggles its goals of full employment and contained inflation.

Lower rates have supported equities, but the extent of further cuts in 2026 is unclear. Fed officials were divided over the path for monetary policy at the most recent meeting in December. Inflation remains above the Fed’s annual target of 2 per cent.

“Softening in the labour market has really given the Fed good cover to change their outlook about reducing rates,” said Eric Kuby, chief investment officer at North Star Investment Management in Chicago.

Jobseekers at a careers fair in California. The US unemployment rate sits at 4.6 per cent.

At the same time, investors are wary that an overly weak report could signal more economic concern than markets now anticipate.

American employment for December is expected to have climbed by 55,000 jobs, a Reuters poll showed. Payrolls rose by 64,000 in November, but the 4.6 per cent unemployment rate was at a more than four-year high.

“If [employment] starts turning down in any kind of meaningful way, that’s going to signal that the recession is a lot closer than people think,” Maley said.

Scott Wren, a senior global market strategist at Wells Fargo Investment Institute, said: “Anything that has to do with underlying economic activity and inflation is really going to catch the market’s attention.”

A backdrop of modest economic growth and moderating inflation was “a good environment for stocks and for risk assets in general”, he said.

Investors will be preparing for the fourth-quarter earnings season, with results from JPMorgan due on January 13, among other major bank reports that week.

Reuters