Australian investors can expect a rough ride when markets open after Wall Street suffered its worst trading session since the UK voted to leave the European Union in June.
Australian share futures were 79 points down - the equivalent of a 1.5 per cent fall when the ASX opens on Monday - following on from the one per cent drop here on Friday.
Commonwealth Securities chief economist Craig James expects the local market will be playing catch-up to the two to 2.5 per cent drop among key US stock indices on Friday.
"A soggier start, I think, for our markets," Mr James told AAP on Sunday.
He described the weakness among global shares as a combination of concerns over a potential interest rate hike by the US Federal Reserve in coming weeks and the European Central Bank sitting pat on monetary policy last week when further stimulus had been expected.
A range of business and consumers confidence readings will be released in Australia next week - the former will take into account the August interest rate cuts, while the latter will be a more up-to-date report reflecting of last week's growth figures that showed the economy had survived 25 years without a recession.
The National Australia Bank will release its monthly report on Tuesday, the same day as the weekly ANZ-Roy Morgan consumer confidence index is issued. The Westpac-Melbourne Institute monthly consumer confidence survey is released on Wednesday.
However, the key figures this week will be the jobs numbers for August on Thursday.
Mr James is expecting a 20,000 people joined the workforce last month, keeping the jobless rate at 5.7 per cent.
"It is clear from the GDP figures our economy continues to grow and that should lead to the unemployment rate being steady or a little bit lower over time," he said.
The June-quarter national accounts released last week showed the economy was growing at a four-year high of 3.3 per cent.
