Title: European Stock Futures Largely Unchanged; ECB Meeting Looms Large

Jul 19, 2022 02:00AM ET

By: AnalysisWatch

European stock markets are expected to open flat on Tuesday amid caution ahead of the latest consumer inflation data in Europe and a key European Central Bank meeting later in the week.

At 02:00 GMT, the DAX futures contract in Germany was trading 0.1% lower, the CAC 40 futures contract in France was trading almost unchanged, and the FTSE 100 futures contract in the UK was up 0.1%.

There is widespread expectation that the European Central Bank will make its first interest rate hike since 2011 later this week, with policymakers essentially committing to a quarter-point increase at the last meeting in June.

With that in mind, investors are now focusing on what September will bring and whether a bigger rate hike, which was flagged last month, is still possible, especially as the growth outlook has deteriorated in recent weeks due to growing concerns over gas supplies to Europe.

Later in the session, the final euro area consumer price index for June is expected to be released, which is expected to confirm that inflation is at a record high of 8.6% year-on-year, up 0.8% on the previous month.

Prior to that, UK labor market data showed that the country's unemployment rate remained unchanged at 3.8% in May and the number of benefit claimants fell by 20,000 in June.

Oil prices retreated on Tuesday, giving back some of the previous session's sharp gains, as several cases of COVID-19 infection forced the northern Chinese port city of Tianjin to close a number of restaurants—the latest major city to battle the virus.

Investors are now awaiting US crude supply data from the American Petroleum Institute, which will be presented later in the day.

As of 02:00 GMT, US crude futures were trading 0.3% lower at $99.08 a barrel, while the Brent contract was down 0.3% at $105.96. Both contracts rose more than 5% on Monday.

In addition, gold futures fell 0.2% to $1,706.20 per troy ounce, while EUR/USD traded 0.1% higher to $1.0154.