AFP, New York :
Global stocks were mixed on Monday as earnings season heated up with reports from major banks, while oil prices fell hard on worries about excess supply.
Markets kept one eye on a summit between US President Donald Trump’s meeting with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Helsinki.
Trump’s supportive posture towards Putin drew some sharp comments from the political world, but had only a “muted” effect on markets, as Briefing.com put it.
There was little pattern in global stock bourses, with London and Paris retreating and Frankfurt edging higher. US stocks finished mostly lower, although the Dow mustered a modest gain.
China’s Shanghai stock index retreated after Chinese economic growth in April-June came in at 6.7 percent, in line with forecasts in an AFP survey and better than the government’s annual target – but a shade down from the previous three months’ 6.8 percent.
Investors are girding for a heavy week of earnings and economic news, including two days of testimony from Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell beginning Tuesday.
Market watchers hope a strong earnings season will be the catalyst for stocks to move higher and shake off worries about trade wars and tightening monetary policy.
Banking shares were buoyed after Bank of America became the latest US company in the sector to report better-than-expected second quarter earnings behind lending growth and lower taxes.
Bank of America jumped 4.3 percent, while JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup both climbed close to four percent. Both JPMorgan and Citigroup had fallen on Friday after reporting solid earnings increases over the year-ago results.
Germany’s Deutsche Bank also had a good session, winning 7.2 percent in Frankfurt after Germany’s biggest lender far outstripped analysts’ estimates of its earnings in the second quarter.
Deutsche is looking to project a refreshed, confident image to investors under new chief executive Christian Sewing, who replaced crisis firefighter John Cryan as head of the bank in April.
Oil prices, meanwhile, closed decisively lower on worries over excess supply, with analysts pointing to myriad factors, including reports the US may tap its Strategic Petroleum Reserve to lower prices, the return of Libyan oil exports following an outage and speculation the Trump administration could allow some exceptions to a ban on purchases of Iranian oil.
