All eyes will be on events in Iraq, and on the US Federal Reserve this week, but Iraq will be the big concern.
Our market will start flat today after an indifferent finish on Wall Street on Friday night and another solid bout of oil trading which saw prices end at nine month highs.
That helped the Aussie dollar regain the 94 cent mark in late trading on Saturday morning – it ended at 94.02 after trading through a half a cent range during the day and night.
After four weeks of gains, last week saw US shares fall by around 0.7% and European shares lose around 0.5% thanks to events in Iraq which erupted without much warning, taking investors and traders in all markets by surprise.
Chinese shares gained 2% and Japanese shares rose 0.1%, but Australian shares fell 1.1% as worries about weak profits, downgrades, falling iron ore prices and rising oil prices took their toll on investor confidence.
Despite the positive US lead ASX 200 futures market rose just 1 point, possibly weighed down by a further 0.7% decline in the iron ore price to $US90.90 a tonne.
The US market finished the week with the biggest losses in two months, snapping the longest weekly rally this year.
The S&P 500 rose 0.3%, to end at 1,936.15, but recorded a 0.7% loss over the week.
The Dow added 41.49 points, or 0.3%, to 16,775.58 in fairly mixed trading. The index lost 0.9% over the past five days.
And the Nasdaq ended the day up 13.02 points, or 0.3% at 4,310.65 and but down 0.3% over the week.
European market closed mostly lower on Friday.
In Asia, the Nikkei 225 index rose 0.8%, brushing aside Iraq worries, while the China Shanghai Composite Index rose 0.9% after data showed lending surged in May.
In Australia, the ASX 200 Index and the All Ordinaries Index both lost 1.1% over last week to two-month lows of 5405.1 points and 5383.7 points respectively.
Only energy and gold stocks rose on Friday as they benefited from the tensions in Iraq, and will again do well today.
Watch though for a statement from Woodside about rumours on the weekend of big job cuts.
