There’s word from across the Tasman that would be dance partners, Sky TV and Vodafone NZ are thinking of pushing ahead with their planned merger and ignoring February’s thumbs down ruling from the country’s competition regulator, the Commerce Commission.

In a US and global first investors now agree that Tesla, the US electric car maker (and tiddler so far as actual production and sales are concerned) is the future. They may be right, they may be wrong, but what we saw overnight Monday was a rare event.

More and more American companies are dropping their annual meetings of shareholders and going for online broadcasts. The argument for the move is based on cost savings and increasing the potential audience – but that is something some companies are already doing by maintaining their meetings and broadcasting online.

In a speech in Melbourne last night, RBA Governor Philip Lowe expanded on his post-board meeting statement comments on housing lending – pointing the finger at some lenders for lax lending standards, blaming the current tax arrangements and urging governments to do something more constructive to boost the supply of housing and land.

The decision to leave interest rates on hold was easy for the Reserve Bank board yesterday – there is no reason for a cut and certainly no reason for an increase. The big discussion, as we pointed out on Monday, was the outlook for housing.

Gold prices won’t be rising very much over the remainder of 2017 if the latest survey from Reuters GFMS is any guide – four dollars or so an ounce.

A big quarter for stockmarkets with few losers. But for the month of March did provide a more sedate performance for some.

The first week of every month always produces a plethora of data releases, meetings and statements.

On the whole it was an OK quarter for most commodities – though not as good though as the September and December quarters of 2016.

Regulators led by APRA have launched an immediate clamp down on home lending to investors, especially via interest only loans. In a statement issued Friday morning APRA said it had written to all Authorised Deposit Taking Institutions (ADIs) informing them of the tougher rules.

According to the Moody’s ratings group US newspaper and magazine owners face another year or more of revenues falling faster than costs can be cut and digital revenues can be boosted. It’s a warning that is not out of line with any outlook for the same sectors in other English speaking markets such as the UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. It will be an unwanted shared experience that can’t be reversed.

Local investors will be looking to build yesterday’s two year high on the ASX when trading resumes later this morning after solid night on global markets.

Watch for a sell off in Australian iron ore shares today after industrial commodity futures, led by iron ore and oil tumbled yesterday. Only gold managed to rise.

The nervous nellies of OPEC have been flushed out into a meeting in Kuwait by the continuing weakness in global oil prices.

Now what will the nervy Wall Street investor do now that Donald Trump has been exposed as a bit of charlatan so far as working ‘miracles’ for investors to share with his policies.

It is not in any corporate reporting calendar but Friday March 31 is the most important ‘event’ this week.