Overnight Australian Stock Report

The Dow closed up 37 points or 0.3% while the S&P gained 0.4% to 1215 and the Nasdaq fell 0.2%.
Beijing has spent the last two years tightening monetary policy and lending conditions, and as result it has become increasingly difficult for smaller players in the Chinese Miracle to secure renminbi loans. To overcome this difficulty a popular strategy has been to borrow money outside of China and with the proceeds buy copper. A copper stockpile then becomes physical collateral against a previously unavailable renminbi loan.
This black or "grey" lending market has developed to the point a lot of Chinese are sitting on a lot of copper. But yesterday Beijing announced it would crack down on such activity. One assumes those holding a loan against their copper will now have to sell the copper to pay back the loan.

The market snapped a two-week winning streak to drop 1.5 percent for the week as weaker metal prices and euro-zone concerns hit miners and financials.
"We have seen a bit of a sell off this afternoon, it does look as if we are seeing some position squaring ahead of the summit on Sunday and essentially the markets, not only here in Australia but across the Asian region, are on hold ahead of potential announcements," said Michael McCarthy, chief market strategist CMC Markets.
France and Germany said in a joint statement that European leaders would discuss a global solution to the crisis on Sunday but no decisions would be adopted before a second meeting to be held by Wednesday at the latest.
The major sticking point is over how to scale up the European Financial Stability Facility, a 440 billion euro ($600 billion) fund so far used to bail out Portugal and Ireland.

The Australian dollar is up almost one US cent as currency traders await the outcome of the European leaders' debt summit on Sunday.   At 1700 AEDT on Friday the Australian dollar was trading at 102.43 US cents up from 101.55 cents on Thursday.