The SPI futures are pointing to a flat start today, after Wall Street was little changed on Friday night.

Of course, those numbers don’t reflect the outcome of the OPEC meeting in Doha overnight, where no agreement was reached with respect to production cuts.

The SPI futres are currently down four points, at 5142.

In local economic news today, the Australian Bureau of Statistics will release new motor vehicles sales data for March.

No major equities news is expected.

Key numbers:

• SPI futures -4 points or 0.1% to 5142 on Saturday morning
• AUD at 76.59 US cents, 82.87 Japanese yen, 67.74 Euro cents and 53.90 British pence
• On Wall St, Dow -0.2%, S&P 500 -0.1%, Nasdaq -0.2%
• In Europe, Stoxx 50 -0.2%, FTSE -0.3%, CAC -0.4%, DAX -0.4%
• In London, Rio -0.5%, BHP +0.2%
• Spot gold at $US1233.99 per ounce
• Brent crude fetching $US43.10 per barrel
• Iron ore slips 1.9% to $US58.28 per tonne

What’s on today:

Local data: New motor vehicle sales March at 11.30am, NZ CPI

Fed speakers: NY boss William Dudley, Minneapolis chief Neel Kashkari, Boston’s Eric Rosengren

Overseas data: China property prices March; Bank of Japan current account; UK Rightmove house prices; US homebuilder sentiment April.

Overseas earnings: Morgan Stanley, PepsiCo, Hasbro, WW Grainger, Netflix, IBM

Stocks in focus

This week Rio Tinto (Tuesday), BHP Billiton (Wednesday) and Vale (Wednesday) will release their latest production reports.

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