43m agoThu 4 Dec 2025 at 8:26pmMarket snapshotASX 200 futures: +0.1%Australian dollar: +0.3% at 66.19 US centsWall Street: Dow flat S&P -0.1% Nasdaq flatEurope: Stoxx600 +0.5%Â Spot gold: +0.2% to $US4239/ounceBrent crude: +0.9% to $US63.30a barrelIron ore: +0.1% to $US104.30 a tonneBitcoin: -1.1% at $US92,071
ASX 200 futures: +0.1%Australian dollar: +0.3% at 66.19 US centsWall Street: Dow flat S&P -0.1% Nasdaq flatEurope: Stoxx600 +0.5%Â Spot gold: +0.2% to $US4239/ounceBrent crude: +0.9% to $US63.30a barrelIron ore: +0.1% to $US104.30 a tonneBitcoin: -1.1% at $US92,071Prices current as at 7:15am AEDT.
Live updates on the major ASX indices:
15m agoThu 4 Dec 2025 at 8:54pm
Aussie miner Rio Tinto puts out divestment plan
Anglo-Australian miner Rio Tinto has put out a plan that it says could generate billions of dollars for the company.
Its CEO, Simon Trott, says the company will achieve this through selling off assets and boosting productivity. It’s part of a plan to simplify the miner’s structure, he says.
Investors have been waiting for this extra detail, since Rio Tinto said in August that it would streamline its business to three core units, down from four.
Assets up for sale include Rio’s titanium and borates businesses, the boss said on a London briefing call.
“We’ll proceed and test the market for (titanium and borates) assets,” the boss said on a briefing call.
“Together with some of the other measures across our footprint: things like land, infrastructure, processing assets, and mining assets.
“So we’re reaching up to $US10 billion [$15 billion].”
26m agoThu 4 Dec 2025 at 8:43pm
Meta reportedly backing away from its namesake
It feels like only yesterday that Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg was confusing everybody with the launch of something called the Metaverse.
The company even changed its name to Meta in 2021 to herald in what it said was a new immersive digital world.
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Now Bloomberg News is reporting the company is going to make budget cuts of up to 30% to its metaverse initiative. That comes five years after it has poured $US60 billion ($90.7 billion) into the idea.
The metaverse group sits within Reality Labs, which produces the company’s Quest mixed-reality headsets, smart glasses and upcoming augmented-reality glasses.
Yet Meta has been struggling to sell its vision of an immersive metaverse of interconnected virtual worlds and expand the market for its devices beyond the niche of the gaming community.
And investors are happy about the possibility of these ideas being scaled back. The company’s shares have risen 4% on these reports. “Smart move, just late,” one analyst told Reuters.Â
The report also comes as Meta scrambles to stay relevant in Silicon Valley’s AI race after its Llama 4 model met with a poor reception.
36m agoThu 4 Dec 2025 at 8:32pm
ASX set for mild morning after Wall Street
Morning! Wall Street has been trading relatively flat overnight in the States, with major indexes mostly holding unchanged.
That’s been as investors digest a batch of economic data, including on the American jobs market, showing claims for unemployment benefits remain low.
Despite that, expectations remain high about a rate cut there next week by the Fed, unlike here in Australia, where some economists are now tipping a hike in our near future.
We’ll be here with you all Friday. It’s expected the ASX will open in benign territory, but anything could happen.