Monday will be a holiday on Wall Street, which will slow down trading on European stock markets. This is because important U.S. employment data will be released later in the week.
At 2:00 AM ET (6:00 GMT), the DAX futures contract in Germany was down 0.3%, the CAC 40 futures contract in France was up 0.6%, and the FTSE 100 futures contract in the UK was down 0.3%.
Global markets are in a sad mood as the second half of the year begins. This is because tightening government policies and rising living costs show that the global economy is more likely to slow down.
Analysts at Nomura said in a note that the Eurozone, the U.K., Japan, South Korea, Australia, Canada, and the U.S. are all likely to fall into recession in the next 12 months. This is because central banks that want to prove they can control inflation are likely to tighten policy too much, even if it hurts growth.
also affects how people feel. On Monday, the news came out that the number of virus cases in some of China’s eastern provinces kept going up over the weekend. This caused people to worry that lockdowns could hurt economic growth, even though the government seemed to have gotten earlier outbreaks in Shanghai and Beijing under control.
But there won’t be much going on Monday because of the July 4th holiday in the U.S. and because of the eagerly awaited monthly U.S. jobs report.
Recent economic data has added to the evidence that the U.S. economy, a key driver of global growth, is slowing down because of the Fed’s aggressive policy tightening. Given the Fed’s mandate to balance inflation and employment, Friday’s nonfarm payrolls report will be closely looked at to see how the labour market is doing.
Back in Europe, Monday’s economic news includes German trade, Spanish unemployment, and Eurozone PPI numbers. In the business world, Spanish energy giant Repsol (BME: REP) is set to report sales results.
Oil prices inched up on Monday as traders thought about worries about a possible slowdown in the U.S. economy and tightening supplies.
Last week, Fed chair Jerome Powell said that the central bank was “unconditionally” committed to bringing down inflation. He also said that there was a chance that the U.S. economy, which uses the most oil in the world, could go into a recession.
Still, there are still worries about the oil supply because Libya’s political unrest is getting worse, some Norwegian oil workers are on strike, and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies are having trouble meeting their new, higher production quotas.
By 2:00 a.m. ET, U.S. crude futures were up 0.3% to $108.78 per barrel, while the Brent contract went up 0.4% to $112.09 per barrel.
In addition, gold futures went up 0.7% to $1,813.85/oz, and EUR/USD went up 0.1% to 1.0435.
