Oil, or rather an unofficial OPEC meeting in Algiers this week will dominate markets, but nothing significant is expected judging by the big slide in global oil prices on Friday night.
In fact our stockmarket will start in the red after a 24 point, or 0.4% fall on the ASX 200 futures market over night Friday.
That was after Friday’s big day here when the ASX200 Index and the All Ordinaries Index rose 1% to 5431 points and 5518 points respectively.
For the week the ASX 200 rose 2.5% adding $39 billion to the market’s value.
Offshore, eurozone shares and the US S&P 500 both pulled back by 0.6% on Friday.
Markets in China, Hong Kong and Japan all lost around 0.3% on Friday in falls that were inevitable after several days of strong gains after the Bank of Japan and Fed decisions on Wednesday.
But the weakness was also driven by a fall in oil prices with nervousness ahead of an OPEC meeting in the week ahead.
Reflecting the soft global lead ASX 200 futures fell 24 points or 0.4%, suggesting that the Australian share market will have a soft start to trade on Monday morning probably falling by around 20-25 points.
With central bank announcements from the Bank of Japan and the Fed out of the way and benign, share markets rose over the last week, US shares rose 1.2%, Eurozone shares gained 3.1%, Japanese shares rose 1.4%, Chinese shares gained 1.1% and Australian shares rose 2.5%.
With the $US down and “risk on” trading back, the $A rose above $US 0.76 to end around 76.23.
In the local market watch the banks today after the big charge last week.
The ANZ led the charge, up 4.7% over the week, the NAB added 3.5%, Westpac was up 2.5% and the Commonwealth brought up the rear, adding 1.6% as it remains on most investors weak lists.
After last week’s solid gain for gold, local miners such as Newcrest, Evolution and Northern Star all finished last week up more than 6%.
Resource giants BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto also rose adding 1.2% and 1.8% respectively, thanks to rising coal prices and a rebound in iron ore prices.
The telco sector was the worst performing with TPG taking a beating, dropping 22% on weak guidance for 2016-17.
