Warren Buffett got a lot of publicity in the US on Thursday night (our time) with his company’s acquisition of America’s Van Tuyl Group, the fifth-largest auto dealership firm in the country and also the largest privately-owned dealer.

For a moment yesterday the worry-worts and panic-heads in the markets swooned and the value of the dollar and the stockmarket slid after weaker than expected retail sales data for August was released.

Despite early reports which suggested that the important September quarter Tankan, or survey of Japanese business sentiment, was a bit better than expected, gloom quickly set in when the figures were analysed.

The news this week from the two big economies of Asia – China and Japan (and our two major export markets) has been more of the same – OK, not startling, but not enough to help boost confidence.

Something is happening on global markets – it’s hard to identify, but sentiment about the still strong US market us being undermined by nervy investors who at times seem to be jumping at shadows.

Investor home borrowing continued to grow strongly in August, hitting a six and a half year high according to data released yesterday by the Reserve Bank.

Finally September seems to have been the month when reality hit the Aussie dollar, much to general relief.

Commodities finished a miserable quarter with a miserable day of trading Tuesday.

Finally an end to nasty September and its equally treacherous quarter (for investors large and small). July was miserable, August a surprisingly solid month and September at first disappointed, and then shocked us with the size and the extent of the sell off.

Something of a turnaround in commodities last week – instead of a continuation of the recent across the board slide, US crude stood out with an unexpected rise.

A top drawer week is ahead for economic and business related data in Australia and around the world.

Hopefully, our market will start with a small gain later this morning – if the share prices futures trading on Saturday morning, our time, is any guide.

Local stockmarkets are heading for another pounding today after markets in Europe and the US sold off sharply, and the price of iron ore again fell overnight and this morning.

No sign of any immediate or even medium term good news for Australia’s embattled resource sector in the latest quarterly forecast by the Bureau of Resource Economics and Energy (BREE), the federal government’s resource forecaster.

No chance of the local market being ‘saved’ today as it was yesterday by the better than expected ‘flash’ report on the health of Chinese manufacturing.

Another bout of losses for gold yesterday and overnight and the metal is now within sight of the $US1,185 price it ended at in 2013 when the price slid 28%.

Our market will start with a small fall this morning after selling across global stockmarkets overnight on fears about the health of the Chinese economy.

Things continue go from bad to worse for Tesco, Britain’s biggest, but battered sliding retail giant.

The usual mid-month surveys of the health of global manufacturing will dominate the coming week, while in Australia the state of the property market will come in for more examination midweek from the Reserve Bank.

Once again world iron ore prices have dominated what was another grim week for commodities, with grains, gold, silver and oil performing weakly and hitting new lows (multi-month or years).

Our market is going to start the week lower after Wall Street ended a positive week on a decidedly mixed note and world iron ore prices again fell on Friday night.

The unsettling influence of China on Australian markets was again underlined yesterday.