Iron ore continues on its latest surge higher – jumping 3% to $US58.70 a tonne, from its close last Friday of $US57.00 a tonne.

Are commodity markets in oil and iron ore bottoming out, thereby helping our market to shake off gloom and doom about the sectors, especially iron ore over the past year or more?

Local shares will look for another solid start this morning after global markets ended last week on an upbeat note on Friday night, our time.

While big oil will dominate the week ahead in the US first quarter reporting season – there’s one tech giant to get out of the way first – Apple which reports tomorrow morning, our time.

The week ahead will see decisions from a number of central banks, led by the US Federal Reserve’s April meeting, US first quarter GDP, US earnings (led by Apple early tomorrow), the start of month surveys of manufacturing from around the world starting with China, and the end of a mixed month of market trading.

The Australian market is heading for a solid opening today.

Surveys of manufacturing from Asia’s two biggest economies – China and Japan, showed surprising falls yesterday in the so-called ‘flash’ reports issued by HSBC/Markit.

So Nasdaq finally conquered the highest peak off all this morning, joining the Dow and S&P 500 in regaining its previous high point. The $US7.7 trillion value tech index at last topped its March 2000 dotcom bubble peak of 5,056.06 and is now within easy distance of the intraday record of 5,132.52.

BHP Billiton’s (BHP) decision to slow the final part of its expansion at Port Headland helped give global iron ore prices their best day’s trading for more than two years overnight with prices up more than 4%.

Japan’s Nikkei closed above the 20,000-point mark for the first time in 15 years yesterday after a surprisingly solid trade report for March.

That’s better. US and European stocks nearly erased Friday’s sell off overnight, as the Dow had its best single day in three weeks.

Global markets are heading for a shakeout today after Chinese share futures plunged Friday night when the country’s stockmarket regulators moved to try and slow the mad cap advance in share prices.

Can another interest rate cut be far behind after China’s central bank yesterday made another cut in the reserve asset ratios of the country’s banks in an effort to force more money to be lent to struggling businesses?

Another big week for oil last week, but gold saw more circumspect trading. In fact, while gold hardly moved all week, oil’s weekly gains were the largest in up to five years.

The US first quarter earnings season cranks up this coming week, with 147 companies in the S&P 500 index reporting, led by a group of the world’s biggest tech companies – including IBM, Google and Facebook.

Surprisingly Australia seems to have created around 80,000 new jobs in February and March – a development which confirms the feeling the economy is travelling better than the gloomsters have been telling us – especially some of those economists from financial groups, many of whom seem to be trying to talk official interest rates lower (banks and others make more money from lower rates).

Listen and watch what oil companies are doing – not what’s happening in the oil futures market.

While China’s economy certainly slowed in the March quarter – the news yesterday scaring markets into falling – it is not the bad news that many headlines and instant analysis made it out to be.

China’s crude production, iron ore imports and real estate investment and sales figures are among the most important figures from the monthly data drop in Beijing – for March there was good and bad news for the Australian market and companies such as Fortescue Metals (FMG).

More evidence that the economy is doing better than many worryworts believe.