James Gruber

Meantime, there appears to be little progress on Iran peace talks, and that continues to drive oil prices higher.

Given all this, it's perhaps understandable that markets took a breather overnight, especially in the US, which has been on a tear of late.

Let's take a deeper look at what's happened with Aussie futures, commodities and currencies.

The ASX is poised to open lower, with index futures down 0.4%.

As for the ASX 200 yesterday, it fell 0.6% to $8,711, its lowest close in almost four weeks.

The

The stalled peace talks and caution ahead of domestic inflation data, which I'll get to later, kept investors on edge.

Today, the energy sector may get another boost from higher crude prices, while the fate of the rest of the index may depend on those inflation figures.

On commodity markets and to those oil prices, they paired earlier gains overnight after the United Arab Emirates said it would leave OPEC, easing some supply concerns, though prices held firm due to stalled efforts to end the Iran war.

Brent crude futures settled 2.8% higher at $111.26 a barrel.

Base metal prices were lower on a stronger US dollar.

Copper futures were down 1.7% while aluminium futures fell 0.6%.

Gold futures fell to a near four-week low on persistent inflation concerns from the ongoing Iran conflict.

The futures settled down almost 2% to US$4,608 an ounce.

Iron ore futures were flat at US$107.12 a tonne.

Let's take a look at currencies now, and they were lower against the US dollar.

The euro slipped 0.1% to 1.1710 US dollars.

The Japanese yen dipped 0.1% also to 159.64 yen, and the Aussie dollar was slightly lower at 71.80 US cents.

Let's head to Wall Street.

The Dow Jones Index finished down 0.1%, the S&P 500 was 0.5% lower, and the Nasdaq dropped 0.9%.