Oil majors Royal Dutch Shell, BP and TotalEnergies slipped about 1% each as crude prices fell more than 3% on fears that pandemic-led curbs in Asia, particularly China, would dent fuel demand.
Miners including Rio Tinto, BHP Group and Glencore also fell on weaker metal prices after data showed China’s export growth unexpectedly slowed in July.
“Investors are focusing on China, where the weakness in the weekend trade data has seen commodity prices, notably iron ore, fall,” Jeffrey Halley, a senior market analyst at OANDA, said in a note.
“With a thin calendar in Europe and the US, markets will likely spend the session chasing their tails on news headlines.”
Trading volumes are expected to be thin as many traders head out for summer holidays.
The UK’s commodity-heavy FTSE 100 slid 0.3%, while France’s CAC 40 and Germany’s DAX were nearly flat.
The pan-European STOXX 600 index was also flat, according to index operator Qontigo’s website. The benchmark hit a record high on Friday, capping its best week since mid-March, on the back of a flurry of dealmaking activity and a strong earnings season.
Of the 70% of the STOXX 600 companies that have reported earnings so far, 68% have topped analysts’ profit estimates, according to Refinitiv IBES data. Only 51% beat expectations in a typical quarter.
Investors will be keenly watching US inflation data due later this week to see if the numbers make a case for an early tapering announcement by the Federal Reserve, the odds of which were cemented after a strong jobs report on Friday.
British food delivery company Deliveroo jumped 9.9% after Germany’s Delivery Hero took a 5.09% stake in the company.
British drugmaker Vectura climbed 2.2% as US tobacco company Philip Morris raised its bid for the company.
Among decliners, Hargreaves Lansdown fell 9.9% even after posting higher annual underlying earnings as Britain’s biggest fund supermarket said it did not expect equity trading volumes to remain at high levels.
HeidelbergCement, the world’s second-largest cement maker, fell 2.4% after Barclays downgraded the stock to “underweight”, citing muted earnings growth due to inflationary pressures.
