(Reuters) - Australian shares are likely to open marginally lower on Tuesday, as mining stocks are poised to continue weighing on the benchmark in pre-Christmas trading, over weaker iron ore prices.
The most actively traded iron ore futures on the Dalian Commodity Exchange <DCIOcv1> slipped 0.1% to 639 yuan per tonne on Monday.
The local share price index futures <YAPcm1> slipped 0.03%, a 72.1-point discount to the underlying S&P/ASX 200 index <.AXJO> close. The benchmark closed down 0.5% on Monday.
New Zealand's benchmark S&P/NZX 50 index <.NZ50> inched 0.09% higher to 11,557.0 by 21:24 GMT.
(Reporting by Nikhil Subba in Bengaluru; Editing by Sandra Maler)
