Miners in Australia, earnings in the US, and the pain in Spain will dominate markets in the week ahead, along with concerns about China, weak commodity prices and interest rates.

Led by copper and gold, commodity prices fell last week, thanks to the weak growth data from China and fears about Europe.

In the US the coming week will start one of the two busiest weeks of the quarterly earnings reporting season with 91 companies in the Standard & Poor's 500 expected to post results.

They will be reporting into a market that has lost its first quarter zip.

The opening fortnight of the new quarter has seen the biggest percentage drop since late November, when the eurozone crisis was last at its peak.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 136.99 points, or 1.1%, to close at 12,849.59 on Friday, a loss of 1.6% from the close before Easter.

That was the biggest weekly hit since the middle of December.

The S&P 500 dropped 17.31 points, or 1.3%, to 1,370.26, off 2% from the Easter Thursday close.

The Nasdaq Composite fell 44.22 points on Friday, or 1.5%, to 3,011.33, leaving it down 2.3% from last week's close.

Since the two weeks since March 30, the Dow and the S&P are each down 2.7%.

Among the big names down to report this week are giants such as Intel Corp, Johnson & Johnson, Coca-Cola Co, DuPont, Microsoft, The Travelers Companies Inc, Verizon Communications Inc, IBM, American Express Co, General Electric Co and McDonald's Corp.

Financial stocks will be watched to see if the better tone for the sector evident from Friday's results from JPMorgan Chase & Co and Wells Fargo & Co (both banks' earnings exceeding forecasts) spills over into the reports from the likes of Citigroup Inc, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley .

By the end of this week we should have a very good idea if earnings reports are as weak as forecast.

The weakness in the US on Friday was more noticeable than in Asia, while Europe sold off by 1% to 3.5% on the continuing concerns about Spain.

Some reports blamed the slowdown in China for some of the weakness in the US and Europe, but Australia, Shanghai, Tokyo and Hong Kong were far more accepting of the news from China than other markets further away.

China is the major market for Australia, Japan and Hong Kong and if the slowdown was such a shock as European and US reports indicated, then markets in the Asian region should have taken a pounding on Friday.

And yet they didn't, with small gains for the day and/or the week being reported.

Investors' concerns about the European debt crisis weighed on the market as yields on Spain's 10-year government bonds rose to 5.95%, the highest level since last November, after data showed that Spanish banks may lack liquidity.

In Australia shares are expected to open lower when trade resumes this morning following losses on offshore markets on Friday night.

On the ASX futures market, the ASX 24, the share price index was 31 points lower to 4333 at the end of trading on Saturday morning.

For the week, the ASX 200 Index added just 3.1 points to 4322.9 points, while the All Ordinaries index closed 1.5 points higher at 4403.8.

The Australian dollar fell back from a 10-day high of $US1.045 on Friday in Australia after the weaker than expected Chinese economic growth data.

The Aussie dollar closed at $US1.0370 in New York early Saturday.

The MSCI Asia Pacific Index added 0.1% last week after a sharp rebound Thursday and Friday of 1.6% which offset six days of losses that included a two month low last Wednesday.

The index is still down 3% from the start of March, but interestingly, it ignored the weak Chinese growth data on Friday, compared with softer trading in Europe and the US.

Japan's Nikkei 225 Stock Average dropped 0.5% last week, South Korea's lost 1% and Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index added 0.5%.

Shanghai added 0.4% on Friday.

In Europe, the Stoxx 600 lost 2.2% to 253.4 as Spain dominated headlines driving up fear levels and China's economy slowed more than forecast.

Bloomberg reported that markets fell in all 18 western European markets, except Iceland and Greece.

London's FTSE 100 lost 1.3%, Germany's DAX dropped 2.8% and France's CAC 40 shed 3.9%, the biggest fall so far in 2012.

Italy's FTSE MIB and Spain's IBEX 35 posted the biggest declines, losing 5.6% and 5.4%, respectively.

The IBEX 35 closed at its lowest level since March 2009.

Copper led most commodities lower last week, especially after a big loss on Friday.

The red metal had its biggest weekly decline since mid-December after China produced weak import and growth data last week, and stocks rose in LME warehouses.

Comex copper futures for May delivery dropped 2.5% in New York too and at $US3.627 a pound.

That took the loss for the week to 4.4%, the biggest weekly loss since midway through last December.

Bloomberg reported that orders to withdraw copper from warehouses monitored by the London Metal Exchange (LME) fell for the ninth straight session, the longest slide since November.

Stocks in LME warehouses rose 3.2% last week, after a 31% drop in the three months to March.

On the LME, copper for delivery in three months fell 2.8% to $US7,990 a metric tonne ($US3.62 a pound).

Aluminium, zinc, lead, nickel and tin prices also fell on Friday in the wake of the Chinese growth report.

Gold futures also fell Friday.

Comex gold for June delivery lost $US20.40, or 1.2%, to $1,660.20 an ounce on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange.

But that couldn't stop the metal ending up for the week, with a rise of 1.8%.

Comex silver for May delivery plunged, losing $US1.13, or 3.5%, to $US31.39 an ounce.

Silver lost 1.1% on the week.

New York oil prices for May delivery fell 81c to settle at $US102.83 a barrel to be down 0.5% for the week.

Oil prices are now down 6.3% since the 2012 peak of $US109.77 on February 24.

In London Brent oil for May settlement climbed 12c to end at $US121.83 a barrel.

The more actively traded June contract dropped 31c, or 0.3%, to $US121.21.

Copyright Australasian Investment Review.
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