Global markets on the second day of the current week are moving towards consolidation amid local profit taking after an upward momentum triggered by Fed Chairman Yellen's recent speech. This week, the focus shifts towards the ECB meeting. Investors take a wait and see attitude. The block of statistics on China was unexpectedly strong; the data supported the Australian dollar and Asian equity indexes. Also in the focus this week, data on the housing market in the US.

American markets opened in the red zone today while Europe lost early gains caused by optimistic Chinese data and traded in the red zone. Corporate reporting remains the main topic throughout this week. Today in the US, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America will provide corporate earnings date.

At FOREX, the US dollar continues to decline relative to most of the major currencies, losses accelerated after disappointing data on retail sales and inflation remained unchanged in June. Today the British pound is an exception. Judging by the prices of derivatives, investors have never seriously considered the possibility of raising rates at the next meeting of the Bank of England (August 3), but weaker CPI figures further lowered the rate raising coefficients.

The euro rose above 1.15 and reached 1.1535 US dollars on the background of news from the US Senate. Then the pair consolidated before taking another impulse up at the end of the European morning, which brought it almost $ 1.1560. The next nearest target is $ 1.1615, last year's maximum, and then the maximum of August 2015 is about $ 1.1715.

On the eve of the ECB meeting on Thursday, where Draghi is expected to reiterate his assessment that inflation is not yet on a stable and lasting path to its goal, European bonds are declining.

Yesterday, Brent oil adjusted from an important level of $ 49 per barrel. Today, in the focus is weekly statistics from API for oil and petroleum products, tomorrow we will analyze official data from the US Department of Energy. Until the end of the week the oil can gain to  51 dollars per barrel.