The continuing fall in veggie prices again protected us against a sharper than actual jump inflation in the three months to September. Who would of seen that coming? The answer, no one.

Wall Street closed higher on Tuesday, with the Dow ending in record territory, supported by earnings results from Caterpillar and 3M that came in ahead of expectations.

China continues to see slowing price growth for new housing with figures for September again showing a distinctive deceleration. In fact according to figures from Reuters, September saw the slowest rate of increase for 17 months.

The cost to the world’s insurers and their reinsurers of the trio of hurricanes and the two Mexican earthquakes, coupled with Cyclone Debbie in Australia and a number of other smaller disasters looks certain to push losses to an all time high by the end of December. Swiss Re, one of the world’s biggest reinsurers, thinks that the trio of US hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria (but not Nate), plus those two recent earthquakes in Mexico will cost the industry about $US95 billion ($A121 billion).

There’s a lot to rattle or enthuse markets and investors this week. We have bank profits and consumer inflation in Australia, the US third quarter reporting season and some big tech and oil companies down to reveal results, more antics from President Trump and his tax plan’s progress; a meeting of the European Central Bank (ECB) and a decision on quantitative easing; Early GDP reports from the US, UK and South Korea; the continuing fall out from the separatist struggles around Catalonia in Spain, the Kiwi election result and the aftermath of yesterday’s easy Japanese election win by prime Minister Abe.

Techs, energy and some media/telco stocks will dominate the US third quarter reporting season this week and the current upbeat outlook on Wall Street will be tested by reports from the likes of tech giants Amazon, Microsoft and Alphabet, along with the serial under performer, Twitter.

The Australian stockmarket looks headed for another day of gains today after a solid close to trading on Wall Street on Friday saw the ASX 200 futures price end with a five point gain.

Oil prices edged higher Friday, with US crude futures ending nearly unchanged over the week as traders mulled OPEC efforts to reach a more balanced market and continued to worry over the potential for more US shale production.

Another solid week for most commodity prices, although gold was again weaker because of the strength of the US dollar.

The outlook for the Australian market – possibly for the rest of the year and into early 2018 could very well be will be set this week with the first of the annual profits from three of our four major banks – with the ANZ reporting its figures on Thursday while Macquarie Group will produce its interim result on Friday.

With growth of 6.9% in the nine months to September, China is all but certain to exceed its full-year target of ‘around 6.5%’.

So what will happen to NZ economic policy now there’s a new Labour-led government with the incoming Prime Minister Jacinda Arden and deputy and kingmaker Winston Peters set to dominate thinking.

Malcolm Turnbull and his government basking in the glow of finally dropping the phrase Clean Energy Target from its energy policy and next week he will get a timely reminder of the big problem – continuing weak wage growth that yesterday’s solid jobs report for September again underlined.