Peter Nurse

Investing.com: European stock markets will open lower on Monday due to investors continuing to worry about slowing global economic growth, as central banks tighten their monetary policies to counter rising inflation.

The contract in Germany fell 0.6% at 2:05 AM ET (605 GMT) and in France it dropped 1%. Meanwhile, the contract in Britain was 0.7%.

European stocks dropped last week. The, which was down around 2.2%, was led by Wall Street’s slump.

They also increased interest rates for the fourth consecutive meeting. Meanwhile, policymakers at have been open to discussing the possibility of hiking rates in the future, possibly starting in July.

According to an interview in the newspaper, the Austrian governor of central banks said that the ECB could increase its interest rate as much as three times this fiscal year in order to fight inflation.

This week sees the release of Germany’s and preliminary first quarter data from the U.K., and these are likely to point to slowing growth in two of Europe’s largest economies.

China’s data from Monday showed that the country experienced a slowdown in growth in April. It grew 3.9% in April compared to March’s 14.7%. It was also the slowest growth since June 2020.

Russia will mark Monday’s anniversary of victory of the Soviet Union over Nazi Germany during World War II. There are fears President Putin may authorize an escalated conflict in Ukraine.

Corporate news will focus on earnings at BioNTech (ETR) with BioNTech set to profit from the COVID vaccine that it co-developed with U.S. companies. Pfizer (NYSE:).

Prices for oil were steady on Monday, with the attention being placed by the European Union in talks over the Russian embargo. This is expected to tighten world supplies.

Later this session, the European Union government will again meet to determine how countries which are heavily dependent on Russian energy such as Slovakia, Hungary and the Czech Republic, can deal with the planned ban on Russian crude oil. This proposal must be approved by all EU members.

On Saturday, seven major industrialized countries of the Group of Seven agreed to ban imports of Russian crude oil.

However, there still remain concerns over global oil demand, especially with China’s ongoing COVID lockdowns. Saudi Arabia (the world’s biggest oil exporter) lowered the crude price for Asia and Europe in June.

At 2:05 AM ET futures had fallen 0.4% at $109.30/barrel while contract prices were down 0.4% at $112.00. For the second consecutive week, both benchmarks rose by 4%.

Also, the price of gold fell 0.6% at $1,870.75/oz while it traded 0.4% lower to 1.0512