Sharemarkets will be looking to the US tonight for guidance after a weak finish to what was a flat week last week around the world.

Comex gold futures finished a few cents higher Friday night in New York to notch up a gain of around 1% for the week – the first positive week for a while.

Australian inflation and, the NAB’s full year figures will be the dominating issues for local investors this week, while offshore it will be the peak of the US third quarter earnings season, plus reports from other regions, such as China and Europe, GDP reports for the US and the UK and end of month data in Japan.

The September quarter and half year (and full year in some cases) earnings reports hits top gear this week with more than 170 S&P 500 companies in the US due to report, including major oil, aircraft makers, telcos, foreign stocks and the mighty A’s – Apple, Alphabet and Amazon.

The tweeting from Big Oil has a new sound – slightly chirpy, upbeat, no longer depressed and looking to leap off the bough.

The Australian dollar surged higher overnight, breaking through the 77 US cent mark, and hitting levels not seen for around 6 months.

No shocks from the final major round of Chinese data yesterday – now for the vital house price figures on Friday.

Despite commentary to the contrary yesterday in the wake of the first speech from new Reserve Bank Governor, Dr Philip Lowe, don’t expect any more rate cuts in Australia.

You can write off any chance of an interest rate cut from the Reserve Bank this year and the chances of one happening in 2017 are rapidly diminishing in the wake of the stunning rebound in the commodities sector (including booming iron ore exports to China), a continuing high level of building approvals (even though the chances of a slide in prices is growing) and continuing moderate to low inflation.

Markets will be looking for an unsteady rise in Asia today after Wall Street ended the week still wondering about a rise in US interest rates in December.

The US third quarter earnings season picks up this week with more than 80 S&P 500 companies (11 of the 30 Dow stocks as well) down to report, including some of the giants of banking and technology, airlines, toys, manufacturing and energy services.

For a second week a combination of a US Presidential TV debate, data from China, US earnings and central bank discussions will dominate global markets. Locally it will be the September jobs report as well as the RBA minutes that will hold investor attention.

Yet again, Chinese trade data again has underwhelmed expectations – this time in September, although the strong rises for key imports like iron ore, crude oil and coal told us a different story.

Oil up, copper down, steel exports lower, again, coal imports up and iron ore at a all time high – go figure as Chinese imports overall slumped sharply in September on top of a sharper than expected fall in exports.

The NSW governments attempts to privatise a small, unknown but vital part of the national financial infrastructure, seems to be hitting a major roadblock which could end the sale with the ACCC expressing serious concerns about one part of the deal if the company – called Pillar – is purchased by a major rival, Link Administration Holdings (LAH).

Well, the Kiwis might have a troubled dairy sector (though it seems to be on the improve) and a house price boom (especially in Auckland) that could destabilise the financial system if it gets out of control, but their economy is doing better than our’s and yesterday that the government had run its second budget surplus in a row.

US bank, Wells Fargo said on Wednesday that its chairman and chief executive John Stumpf would step down from the bank effective immediately as he becomes the highest profile casualty of the scandal involving sales targets and the creation of 2 million or more fraudulent bank and credit card accounts without the knowledge of the customers involved.

Well, so much for the debt and deficit state of emergency so beloved of Tony Abbott, Joe Hockey in years gone by, and Scott Morrison and Malcolm Turnbull during the election campaign – not to mention any number of scaremongering economists and ratings agencies.

A sea of red from markets in Europe and the US – thanks to a weak quarterly report from Alcoa helping trigger a selloff, assisted by data showing OPEC countries producing oil at record levels, plus another rise in the value of the greenback.

The latest National Australia Bank business survey showed business conditions picked up in September as sales and profits rebounded while a marked rise in forward orders pointed to further growth in coming months.

A story on the Financial Times website overnight gave an early tip about yesterday’s surprise decision by BP to dump its controversial two-well drilling campaign in the Great Australia Bight.

The House of Representatives economic committee talks to lead financial regulators, APRA, ASIC and the ACCC on Friday.