People walk past a digital display of Tokyo stock prices at a securities firm in Tokyo Monday, July 2, 2012. Asian stock markets inched higher Monday amid continued optimism over Europe's moves to ease its debt crisis and economic malaise. (AP Photo/Koji Sasahara)
People walk past a digital display of Tokyo stock prices at a securities firm in Tokyo Monday, July 2, 2012. Asian stock markets inched higher Monday amid continued optimism over Europe's moves to ease its debt crisis and economic malaise. (AP Photo/Koji Sasahara)
A man waits to cross a road as others watch a digital display of global stock indexes outside a securities firm in Tokyo Monday, July 2, 2012. Asian stock markets inched higher Monday amid continued optimism over Europe's moves to ease its debt crisis and economic malaise. (AP Photo/Koji Sasahara)
LONDON (AP) ? Markets made further gains Monday as investors continued to cheer Europe's latest efforts to deal with a debt crisis that has clouded the outlook for the global economy.
Last Friday, the eurozone leaders agreed a set of measures to alleviate the financial crisis, including the establishment of a banking union and changes to the way the bailout fund operates.
Investors cheered the measures, which they concluded reduced the risk that Italy and Spain, which have the eurozone's third and fourth largest economies, would need a sovereign bailout.
"For now at least sentiment remains positive, and this eurozone-inspired rally has certainly proved more sustainable than any other we have experienced so far," said David Jones, chief market strategist at IG Index.
Gains were limited somewhat by recognition that the measures do not solve many of the euro's longer-term debt problems and Europe's economic problems remain huge. Unemployment in the eurozone hit 11.1 percent in May, the highest since the euro began in 1999.
Elsewhere, signs that China's economy is slowing also helped cool of the stock rally.
In Europe, the FTSE 100 index of leading British shares was up 0.5 percent at 5,599 while the CAC-40 in France rose 0.9 percent to 3,225. Germany's DAX was 0.8 percent higher at 6,470.
The euro, however, gave up some of Friday's big gains ? it was 0.3 percent lower at $1.2626. Oil prices gave up some of Friday's $7 gains. Benchmark crude for August delivery was down $1.42 a barrel at $83.54.
Wall Street was poised for steady opening with both Dow futures and the broader S&P 500 futures up 0.1 percent. Trading volume in the U.S. is expected to be light this week ahead of Wednesday's Independence Day, but is likely to pick up in the run-up to Friday's monthly nonfarm payrolls data, which often set the market tone for a week or two after their release.
"Many market participants may choose to extend their holiday by taking off either the first or last few days of this week," said David Morrison, senior market strategist at GFT Markets. "With payrolls coming out on Friday, it seems more likely that traders would prefer to miss the first half of the week, but overall volumes could be light."
As well as the payrolls figures for June, investors will look forward to policy decisions from the European Central Bank and the Bank of England later in the week. The ECB is widely tipped to cut its main interest rate to a record low from its current 1 percent to help the ailing eurozone economy, while the Bank of England could back another monetary stimulus to get the British economy growing again.
Earlier in Asia, sentiment was dented by signs that the Chinese economy, the world's second-largest, continues to slow. Chinese industrial production fell to a seven-month low in June, according to HSBC's purchasing managers index survey.
China's Shanghai Composite index increased less than 0.1 percent to 2,226.11. But Japan's Nikkei 225 index fell less than 0.1 percent to 9,003.48 and South Korea's Kospi slipped 0.1 percent to 1,851.65. Markets in Hong Kong were closed Monday to commemorate the hand-over of the territory to China in 1997.
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Alex Kennedy in Singapore contributed to this report.
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