On Monday, when the important U.S. inflation and U.K. GDP numbers come out, as well as more quarterly corporate results, it is likely that European stock markets will open a little bit higher.
At 2:00 AM ET (0600 GMT), the DAX futures contract in Germany was up 0.6%, the CAC 40 futures in France were up 0.1%, and the FTSE 100 futures contract in the United Kingdom was up 0.4%.
This week, European stocks rose, aided by generally favorable corporate earnings. However, they finished lower on Friday after a much stronger-than-expected U.S. employment data diminished expectations that the Federal Reserve may ease its aggressive effort to manage inflation, which is impacting economic activity in the world’s largest economy and main growth generator.
In light of this, investors’ emphasis will be on Wednesday’s U.S. consumer price index, with experts anticipating that the annual rate of inflation will be reduced to 8.7 percent in July from 9.1 percent in June, which was the highest increase since 1981.
On Friday, the U.K.’s GDP for June and the second quarter will be released. Last week, the Bank of England said that it thought the economy would go into a long recession later in the year.
Siemens Energy (ETR: ENR1n), a company that makes equipment for the power industry, said that its net loss in 2022 would be bigger than expected because reorganizing its business in Russia would cost about 200 million euros ($204 million).
French utility company Veolia (EPA: VIE) has finalized an agreement to sell Suez’s U.K. garbage business to Australia’s Macquarie Group (ASX:MQG) for about $2.4 billion euros.
Oil prices increased slightly on Monday, but stayed at multi-month lows as worries of a recession weighed heavily on demand projections.
The most recent statistics indicate that China, the world’s largest petroleum importer, is recovering slowly from the COVID-19 closure. In July, the world’s second-largest economy imported 8.79 million barrels per day of petroleum, up from a four-year low in June but still 9.5% less than a year earlier.
Crude oil futures in the United States rose 0.6 percent to $89.55 per barrel at 2:00 a.m. ET, a week after falling by just under 10%. The Brent contract increased by 0.6% to $95.52, following a drop of just under 14% last week, which sent prices to their lowest levels since February.
Furthermore, gold futures fell 0.1 percent to $1,789.85 per ounce, while the EUR/USD increased 0.1 percent to 1.0184.
