On Monday, the European stock markets are likely to open with small gains, continuing the good trend from the end of last week. This will be helped by the big gains Ukrainian troops made in territory over the weekend.
At 02:00 ET (06:00 GMT), the DAX futures contract in Germany went up 0.4%, the CAC 40 futures contract in France went up 0.6%, and the FTSE 100 futures contract in the U.K. went up 0.2%.
General Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, the chief commander of Ukraine, said on Sunday that his country has retaken more than 3,000 sq km (1,160 sq miles) of land this month. Most of this land was taken back thanks to a quick weekend offensive that forced Russia to leave its main logistics hub in the Kharkiv region.
Related: European stock futures are going up, and the ECB meeting is coming up.
After being stuck for months, these quick moves will give the markets time to think about the range of possible outcomes. Long-term attrition is still a possibility, but so is an end to the conflict sooner than expected.
As September began on a good note, European markets ended the week with good gains, and this is likely to continue on Monday.
Manufacturing production in the U.K. went up 0.1% from June to July, according to data released Monday. This is better than the 1.6% drop in the previous month. However, industrial production went down 0.3%, which was worse than the 0.9% drop in June.
Still, a lot of attention will be on Tuesday’s report of the latest U.S. consumer prices, which are expected to show that inflation slowed down in August.
This could give the Federal Reserve something to think about before its policy-setting meeting next week. The U.S. central bank is expected to raise interest rates by 75 basis points for the third time in a row to try to slow down inflation.
On Thursday, the European Central Bank raised its key deposit rate from 0% to 0.75%. President Christine Lagarde said that two or three more increases are likely to bring inflation back to the bank’s goal of 2%.
In business news, Philips (AS:PHG) is likely to be in the spotlight after the Dutch press reported that the shareholder association VEB is threatening to take the conglomerate to court over how it handled a worldwide recall of respiratory machines.
Swiss Re (SIX:SRENH) said that global geopolitical tensions, changes in the economy, and climate change have increased the need for risk protection, which will cause premiums to go up.
Oil prices went down on Monday as traders thought about the aggressive tightening of monetary policy, China’s COVID-19 restrictions, and the quick offensive by Ukrainian troops over the weekend.
Related: Futures for European stocks go down, and German industrial production goes down.
Last week, trade data showed that China’s oil imports slowed down a lot in August because of COVID-related problems in the economy. This makes people worry that the biggest importer in the world will lose a lot of demand as the year goes on.
By 02:00 ET (06:00 GMT), U.S. crude futures had dropped 1.2% to $85.23 per barrel, while the Brent contract had dropped 1.1% to $91.83.
Also, gold futures went down 0.3% to $1,722.55/oz, and EUR/USD went up 0.5% to 1.0086.
