European Shares Seen Muted As Tech Earnings Loom

(RTTNews) - European stocks are seen opening narrowly mixed on Monday as investors weigh geopolitical tensions and brace for key tech earnings as well as the ECB rate decision.

Brent crude prices surged over 2 percent above $90 a barrel for the first time since mid-June after U.S. forces struck Iran for a ninth consecutive day and Iran retaliated by firing missiles toward Jordan that risked widening the conflict into neighboring Israel.

Bahrain's Interior Ministry activated warning sirens and urged residents to seek shelter. Kuwait Petroleum said an Iranian strike hit one of its oil facilities. The U.K. Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) agency said that a vessel was on fire off the coast of Oman.

U.S. President Donald Trump told reporters Sunday evening that the U.S. hit Iran very hard in honor of the three great patriots.

However, analysts said the damage inflicted by Iran on America's regional military network may be significantly wider than Washington has publicly acknowledged.

On the earnings front, investors await earnings results from U.S. heavyweights, including Alphabet, Intel, Tesla and IBM Corp. this week amid concerns over lofty valuations and fears that a bubble is forming - most notably in the memory chip space where share prices have surged to unprecedented levels this year.

In economic news, U.K. inflation data along with provisional purchasing managers' surveys for the U.S., Eurozone and the U.K. will be in the spotlight this week. Central banks in Europe and Turkey are expected to hold interest rates on July 23 despite rising fears of inflation.

Asian stocks were trading mixed, with Chinese and Hong Kong markets rising after Chinese startup Moonshot AI unveiled Kimi K3, a new open-source model that the company said closes much of the gap with models such as Open AI's ChatGPT and Anthropic's Claude.

The dollar strengthened against global peers and gold was little changed at $4,012 an ounce after Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland President Beth Hammack said persistently high inflation is her bigger concern, joining other hawks arguing interest rates may need to rise.

Brent crude futures jumped nearly 3 percent to $90.40 a barrel, after having risen nearly 16 percent last week, as the Middle East conflict expanded beyond military targets, with bridges, utilities, and port facilities coming under attack. WTI crude futures were up 2.3 percent at $83.66 a barrel.

U.S. stocks ended lower on Friday as Netflix provided disappointing third-quarter guidance and oil prices jumped over 4 percent to their highest in more than a month amid concerns about the escalating conflict in the Middle East.

Chinese startup Moonshot AI launched what it claims is the world's largest open AI model, Kimi K3, raising concerns that the AI spending spree driving this year's market rally could be at risk.

In economic news, a measure of U.S. consumer sentiment rose to a five-month high in July, while single-family housing starts and building permits dipped, and industrial output edged up a slightly less-than-expected 0.1 percent month-on-month in June.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite lost 1.4 percent, the S&P 500 dipped 1 percent and the Dow dipped 0.8 percent.

European stocks closed broadly lower on Friday as fighting between the U.S. and Iran escalated and a global tech sell-off intensified.

The pan-European STOXX 600 declined 0.3 percent, France's CAC 40 dropped half a percent and the German DAX eased 0.3 percent while the U.K.'s FTSE 100 rose 0.3 percent.