Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway has again spent billions of dollars buying back its shares in the third quarter because it couldn’t find the huge, one-off deal to soak up some of its $US145 billion cash pile.

For the week US shares rose 7.3%, Eurozone shares were up 7.5%, Japanese shares rose 5.9% and Chinese shares rose 4.1%. The election and its outcome (uncertain as it was) was clearly a big positive. The Australian market was up 4.4%, erasing last week’s 3.8% fall.

After the madness of last week, there’s going to be a much quieter pace of events – there’s a new president whose election will soak up pressure and attention. Still, there is a lot ahead – GDP updates from the Eurozone, UK, Russia, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Philippines, and Japan. There’s also a monetary policy decision from the Reserve Bank of NZ, Chinese inflation, earnings here and in the US, Asia, and Europe, a monthly business survey in Australia.

The ASX is heading for a very modest start to trading ahead of the US election results after in the day and into the evening.

America dominates global affairs and news this week thanks to the elections on Tuesday, followed by the continuing surge in COVID-19 cases, not to mention the second last meeting of the year for the US Federal Reserve.

A big, big week here, in the US and globally, with Tuesday and Wednesday the key days here and in the US. There’s the expected uncertainty from Tuesday’s US elections, global surveys of manufacturing activity while in Australia, there’s the Reserve Bank Board meeting tomorrow.

Last week’s losses converted what were modest gains for October into worrying losses for US shares. For the month, the Dow slid 4.6%, the S&P 500 dipped 2.8% and the Nasdaq fell 2.3%. But unlike other markets the ASX rose 1.9% in October.