Things have settled down after after last week's action-packed line-up of market-moving data releases from Australia and China, but there's still plenty to keep investors on their toes over the next five days. Here are three things to watch for this week.

1. Australasian markets awoke on Monday to news from the Qatari capital Doha that the world's largest oil producers had failed to reach agreement on production freezes.

The South China Sea is rich in natural resources. Credit:Bloomberg

Their failure, mainly because of Saudi Arabia's insistence that Iran be a party to any output deal, immediately triggered a sell-off of the Australian dollar and other commodity currencies.

The Aussie plummeted by as much as 1.8 per cent, to US75.93¢, before climbing back to US76.66¢.