A lot of investors know our big four banks have a big presence in New Zealand, but most will not understand that with that dominance also comes risks, especially now with the housing boom in Auckland and the impact of the slide in global dairy prices.

On the face of it, the last major round of economic data for the September month and quarter was a little better than expected – third quarter GDP rose at an annual rate of 6.9%, down on 7% in the first and second quarters and 7.3% for all of 2014.

China dominates the start and the end of this week.

Global shares rose to a two-month high on Friday night, thanks to the continuing belief that the US Federal Reserve won’t be lifting interest rates any time soon.

The US earnings season cranks up in the coming week with over 400 companies of all sizes due to report, including 118 S&P companies who will be releasing details of their third quarter earnings. Included in that number will be giants from banking such as Morgan Stanley, technology, Microsoft and Yahoo! and manufacturing, Boeing, 3M and Caterpillar.

While oil rose and gold fell on Friday night trading offshore, their weekly performances reversed that as the upbeat sentiment about commodities from the week before gradually petered out.

According to the Bureau of Statistics, Australia’s estimated seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for September was steady at 6.2% (technically it was a fall of 0.1 percentage points “based on unrounded estimates” from August).

Chinese inflation eased in September as the economy continues to meander, with deflationary cost pressures in the industrial sector showing no signs of easing.

Another miserable night on markets offshore – with shares in Europe and the US closing lower in mixed and dirty trading. And we can blame giant US retailer Wal-Mart Stores which stunned investors with a big earnings and sales downgrade.

So looking through some of the Chinese trade data yesterday, was September another month of where the country took advantage of low commodity prices to boost stocks of key resources such as oil, copper, iron ore etc?

China is heading for a third quarter slowdown, with economic growth now estimated at well under the target level of a 7% annual rate, after another month of weak trade data.

Well, here’s an outlier – a group of bank economists talking about the Australian economy in a generally upbeat and positive fashion – without resorting to doom and gloom warnings of big price falls in property, recessions, downturns and the like.

The Aussie dollar hit new seven week highs in offshore trading overnight, but a sharp 5% slide in oil prices has hit the newly rediscovered support for energy stocks. US copper prices hardly moved, and while gold rose, stockmarkets shed much of their optimism that generated the surge in prices last week.

A storming end to the week for commodities, a week after many analysts and commentators had thrown in the towel after prices slid to multi year lows and investors sold off shares in giant miners such as Glencore, BHP Billiton (BHP) and Rio Tinto (RIO).

Some top level economic data this week here and from China will test markets and investor confidence in the latest recovery.

Sharemarkets ended a good week with something of a whimper early Saturday as the strong support from earlier in the week dissipated.

The US third quarter earnings season gathers pace this week after Alcoa kicked off the reporters last Thursday with a much weaker than expected performance that highlighted what will be the issues for investors over the next two months – the high value of the US dollar, poor growth in emerging markets, falling commodity prices and patchy domestic demand.

As expected, no move on interest rates from the Reserve Bank and none in the remainder of 2015 after the central bank kept the cash rate steady at 2.0% yesterday.