By Peter Nurse 

- European stock markets are expected to open marginally lower Monday, with investors looking toward the European Central Bank’s annual get-together as well as the summit of the Group of Seven leaders for guidance after an extremely turbulent first half of the year.

At 02:00 AM ET (0600 GMT), the DAX futures contract in Germany fell 0.1%, CAC 40 futures in France dropped 0.1%, and the FTSE 100 futures contract in the U.K. fell 0.1%.

European equity indices closed last week with healthy gains, as the pan-European STOXX 600 index ended 2.6% higher Friday, its best day in more than three months.

However, this positive tone has been unusual of late as investors have fretted over the potential of global recession as central banks aggressively tighten monetary policy to combat rampant inflation.

With this in mind, the ECB’s three-day forum gets underway on Monday in Portugal, and investors will be looking for clues on how the central bank views the trade-off between curbing inflation while still trying to ensure a soft-landing for the global economy.

Additionally, investors will be looking for more updates from the three-day summit of the Group of Seven leaders, which began on Sunday, with the situation in Ukraine and the outlook for the global economy likely to top the agenda.

In corporate news, Credit Suisse (SIX:CSGN) is likely to be in the spotlight as Swiss judges are set to rule Monday whether the Swiss lender failed to prevent money laundering linked to an alleged cocaine trafficking gang.

Oil prices traded largely flat Monday as traders waited for news from the ongoing G7 meeting ahead of this week’s gathering of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and their allies, a group known as OPEC+.

The G7 leaders are likely to seek further ways to cut Russia's ability to fund its war in Ukraine, which could include more moves against Moscow’s oil and gas sector, and potentially also its gold exports.

OPEC+, which includes Russia, is expected to stick to its previously announced plan to boost output by 648,000 barrels a day in July and by the same amount in August.

Also of interest this week will be last week’s delayed inventory data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, after the official body was unable to publish it last Thursday due to technical problems. 

By 02:00 AM ET, U.S. crude futures traded 0.2% lower at $107.37 a barrel, while the Brent contract fell 0.2% to $108.90.

Additionally, gold futures rose 0.4% to $1,836.70/oz, while EUR/USD traded 0.1% higher at 1.0560.