Commodity prices fell again last night, but our market will ignore that today, judging by trading on the share futures contract which shows the ASX 200 starting flat this morning.

Other than property prices in Sydney and Melbourne, there was little in yesterday’s data releases about local inflation, manufacturing, job ads and property prices that would force the Reserve Bank’s hand on interest rates later today.

Commodities were hammered lower last month, with major sector indices falling to a series of five and six year lows.

July was a rough month for some markets and investors, especially in Chinese shares and in commodities.

The Australian June 30 reporting season accelerates noticeably this week. After a couple of weeks of scattered updates, seven major reports will be issued this week.

It’s one of those start of month deluges of economic data this week in major economies, added to the continuing surge of June quarter, half year and yearly financial results here and in the US, UK, Europe and across Asia.

Trading will start cautiously today, but keep an eye on China where, despite the signs of government support, the market sold off yesterday.

Financial markets have survived the latest fed meeting, with growing expectations of a rate rise at the two day meeting of the US central Bank in September.

A bit of a rebound on global sharemarkets overnight, but all eyes will be on China today to see if the recovery extends to that rattled market.

New Zealanders can expect more rate cuts in coming months as the country’s central bank worries about slowing growth, slowing inflation and the dramatic impact of the dairy price plunge will have on demand in the next year or so.

The global equity sell off sparked by the surprise Chinese stock-market rout late yesterday, spread to Europe and Wall Street overnight and will infect Australia and Japan this morning.

The peak of the US June quarter earnings season will be reached this week with around 172 S&P 500 companies due to report – with big drug companies and giant energy groups, along with Facebook dominating the headlines, but watch for more talk about the negative impact of the US dollar.

A nasty sell-off awaits traders this morning in Australia and other markets after commodity prices fell to five and six year lows (yet again) on Friday and equities were battered from pillar to post.

America grabs centre stage this week, with the two-day meeting of the Fed, the first estimate for second quarter GDP and a flood of June 30 results – all this will cascade through increasingly fragile financial markets.

The gloomy outlook for commodity prices will again be the major driver for many markets this week – starting with Australia today.

Economic data from South Korea and Japan yesterday painted very different pictures about the health of two of our major export markets.

There was a major change in market ranking on Wall Street this morning in the wake of the shock improvement in Amazon’s June quarter results. Amazon is now worth more than the mighty Wal Mart.

Don’t worry about the pick up in inflation the June quarter, it was expected, and won’t worry the Reserve Bank.

A new media giant is close to receiving the greenlight by US regulators. The Department of Justice signed off on it on Tuesday and the Federal Communications Commission is on the verge of adding its tick (with conditions). When that is completed shortly, AT&T will be able to complete its takeover of DirecTV at a cost of $US48 billion ($A65 billion).

As expected the Reserve Bank of New Zealand cut its cash rate to 3% this morning, with more cuts on the way as the country’s economy softens in the face of a terms of trade shock from the slide in dairy export income.

Wall Street is heading for a rocky time later today after Apple and Microsoft surprised on the downside in quarterly earnings reports this morning, and a weak performance by IBM and other big tech stocks pushed US markets down by around 1% for the Dow.