Dec 24 (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.