The price of natural gas jumped as much as 2.4% to $2.30/MMBtu on Monday, as temperatures for late July and early August are expected to be warmer-than-expected. Latest data from EIA showing a smaller-than-forecast increase in US natural gas stocks also supported prices.

US stocks rose on Monday morning as investors await quarterly earnings reports from Facebook, Alphabet, Amazon, McDonald’s and Boeing this week, while the prospect of a smaller-than-anticipated Fed interest rate cut in July weighed on sentiment. The Dow Jones rose 32 points, or 0.1%, to 27,186; the S&P 500 advanced 7 points, or 0.2%, to 2,984; and the Nasdaq added 44 points, or 0.5%, to 8,189 around 15 minutes after the opening bell.

The British pound fell 0.2% Monday morning after the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) said risks to growth were "heavily weighted to the downside" while recent economic data suggested Britain's economy shrank in the April-June quarter and is set to contract in the third quarter as well, which would be the UK's first recession since the global financial crisis. Also, the NIESR slashed its growth forecasts for 2019 and 2020 to 1.2% and 1.1%, compared to 1.4% and 1.6% previously. The think tank also believes that sterling would plunge by 10% under a no-deal Brexit scenario.

Taiwan's export orders declined 4.5 percent from a year earlier to USD 38.50 billion in June 2019, following a 5.8 percent fall in the previous month and compared to market expectations of a 0.8 percent decrease. Demand dropped for electronic products (-4.3 percent), basic metals (-15.7 percent), machinery (-22.3 percent), plastics and rubber (-9.6 percent), chemicals (-18.5 percent), optical, photographic, cinematographic apparatus (-8.5 percent), and electrical machinery products (-4.6 percent). By contrast, orders for information & communication products rose 4.7 percent. Among major trade partners, exports orders declined from China & Hong Kong (-14.6 percent), ASEAN (-13 percent), Japan (-7.9 percent), and Europe (-5.3 percent), but increased from the US (6.8 percent).

European stock markets were barely unchanged on Monday morning, as investors await cautiously major central bank decisions on monetary policy and Britain’s new Prime Minister. News from the Wall Street Journal suggested that the Fed funds rate will be lowered by only a quarter point in its next meeting but it can be cut further in the upcoming months. In the UK, the outcome of the Conservative leadership elections will be announced on Tuesday and Boris Johnson is seen as the favorite to succeed Theresa May as the new British Prime Minister. The FTSE 100 climbed 0.2%; the DAX 30 and the CAC climbed 0.1% while the IBEX 35 was down 0.2% around 08:45 am London time.

Oil prices climbed on Monday morning amid rising concerns of a supply disruption in the Strait of Hormuz. On Friday, Iran seized a British oil tanker in the Gulf, after Britain’s capture of an Iranian tanker earlier this month while Libya said a shut down in the country’s largest oilfield caused a production loss of about 290,000bpd. The US crude rose 1% to $56.2 a barrel and the Brent crude jumped 1.5% to $63.4 a barrel around 08:25 AM London time.

Stock markets across the Asia-Pacific region closed in the red on Monday, amid uncertainties over China-US trade tensions and expectations that the Fed interest rate cut later this month will be smaller than anticipated after the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that the central bank plans to cut rates by only a quarter-percentage point. The Shanghai Composite index slumped 36 points, or 1.3%, to 2,888; the Nikkei 225 fell 50 points, or 0.2%, to 21,417 ahead of quarterly earnings reports from Canon and Nidec due Wednesday; the Hang Seng index lost 320 points, or 1.1%, to 28,445; the Kospi declined 1 point, ot 0.1%, to 2,093; and the S&P/ASX 200 dropped 9 points, or 0.1%, to 6,691.

The Baltic index, which provides a benchmark for the price of moving the major raw materials by sea, rose nearly 1% to 2,191 index points on Monday, hitting the highest value since December 2013, on the back of higher demand for vessels shipping iron ore in the Atlantic.

Wholesale sales in Canada fell 1.8 percent from a month earlier in May 2019, following a downwardly revised 1.7 percent gain in the previous month and missing market expectations of a 0.5 percent rise. It was the largest decline in wholesale trade since March 2016, as sales dropped in the motor vehicle and parts subsector (-4.3 percent from 2.5 percent in April), the steepest monthly decrease since February last year, namely motor vehicle industry (-5.2 percent). Also, sales went down for food, beverage and tobacco (-1.2 percent from 1.8 percent); machinery, equipment and supplies (-0.9 percent from 5 percent), led by construction, forestry, mining and industrial machinery, equipment and supplies industry (-2.7 percent); personal households (-0.8 percent from 5.8 percent); and miscellaneous goods (-4.2 percent, the same as in April), in particular agricultural supplies (-11.1 percent). On a yearly basis, wholesale sales increased 1.2 percent.