Aust shares expected to open lower THE Australian sharemarket is expected to open in negative territory on Monday despite a late surge at the end of last week. Local investors are nervous ahead of the US Federal Reserve's policy board meeting on Wednesday, amid speculation the Fed will soon wind back its third round of bond purchases, known as quantitative easing, or QE3. Locally, the ASX 200 futures market is pointing to a fall of 26 points when the market opens on Monday. AMP Capital chief economist Shane Oliver predicts the local market will remain volatile until the results of the Fed's meeting are released. "There's still quite a bit of nervousness going into the Fed's meeting on Wednesday as to what will be the signal regarding tapering quantitative easing and interest rates and that's probably going to cause volatility in the week ahead," Mr Oliver said. After recent falls on the local market, investors were taking a renewed interest in higher yielding banking stocks and telcos, he said. Overall I think the Fed's message is going to be taken positively by markets, but there will be some nervousness in the lead up to it. It comes after US stocks gave up an early rally and ended lower on Friday due to investor caution. No significant local data is expected to be released this week. Minutes of the Reserve Bank of Australia's June board meeting will be released on Tuesday while Westpac-Melbourne Institute leading indexes of economic activity will be released on Wednesday. In Australia, the market on Friday had its best day in nearly 18 months as investors decided its month-long slide had gone far enough. The benchmark S&P/ASX200 index closed 96 points, or 2.04 per cent, higher at 4,791.8.