Australian investors will be greeted by good news this morning as iron ore prices leapt to their second two month high in three days.

While Reserve Bank governor, Phil Lowe says the next movement in interest rates “will be up rather than down”, don’t go running for the cliff quite yet because he reckons there won’t be any need for any movement for quite a while – possibly two years.

Australia’s retailing sector faces years or more of the same – unrelenting cost and price pressures – but don’t blame Amazon. According to Reserve Bank Governor Phil Lowe the sector has already been swamped by a slide in consumer spending to decade lows, and faces more of the same with low wages, low inflation and falling prices.

There’s still an awful lot of guff being written about how Amazon is going to damage Australian retailing, its suppliers and other sectors of the economy and stockmarket

Standby for a possible sell off in oil as US production hits all time highs and the emerging possibility of Russia abandoning the 1.8 million barrels a day production cap deal with Saudi Arabia and the rest of OPEC.

We can expect a soft start to a week that will be dominated, as usual at this time of year by America’s Thanksgiving holidays which will see one and a half days trading cut from the schedule, as well as the usual Black Friday spending binge followed by the online version a week today.

In something of a surprise, China’s housing boom remains alive – at a slower pace – but it hasn’t died as many ‘experts’ have been forecasting.

A fairly quiet week ahead of markets because of the Thanksgiving holidays in the US on Thursday night and Friday, Sydney time.

Oil weakened, gold rose sharply on Friday last week and on Friday, while iron ore was steady and copper, nickel, aluminium all suffered losses.

Is the gloss going off rebounding oil? It seems to be the case as US oil production hits an all time high of well over 9.6 million barrels a day and prices continue easing.

This week we saw the central policy dilemma the Reserve Bank and government face as we approach the end of the year and the mid year economic update was laid out in the solid jobs data for October on Thursday.

A massive overhaul of several of Wall Street’s most important stockmarket indices next year will see tens of billions of dollars of investor funds move, potentially impacting the share prices of some of the biggest names – such as Amazon, Netflix, Alphabet, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, AT&T, Verizon and others.

There was a lot riding on the September quarter Wage Price Index (WPI) from the Australian Bureau of Statistics at 11.30 am yesterday, – in terms of the future health of the economy, the budget and the direction of interest rates, the WPI was a far more significant set of data.

The status quo ruled at Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway investment department in the September quarter – with only a handful of changes, including two major moves – buying more Apple and selling more IBM.

A timely warning from the big end of the global investment markets, or more henny penny (‘the sky is falling’) warnings?

Australian business conditions continued at two decade highs in October, although the National Australia Bank said its survey of conditions and confidence did spot a couple of possible weak sports emerging.

Shares in General Electric, fell for a second day to near six year lows on Wall Street as investors reacted negatively to its moves to cut its dividend by 50%, focus on three of its biggest business lines, perhaps sell down its 60% plus stake in Baker Hughes, the third biggest US oil services group, and cut tens of thousands of jobs in the process.

China’s economy ticked over in October (a bit like Australia’s as shown in yesterday’s NAB survey for last month) but there are suggests a slowing could be ahead as urban investment hit a new 18-year low.

Struggling American industrial giant, General Electric will slash its dividend by 50%, focus on three of its biggest business lines, may sell down its 60% plus stake in Baker Hughes, the third biggest US oil services group, but won’t break up the company completely.