OIL: Oil Summary At European Close: Crude Slightly Higher

• Stocks are gaining early Monday, the tech-heavy Nasdaq outperforming as it climbed to a new record high in the first half. Still well off Friday's high print of 45770.20, the DJIA trades up up 81.16 points (0.18%) at 45483.85, S&P E-Minis up 24 points (0.37%) at 6513.25, Nasdaq up 166.6 points (0.8%) at 21864.93 vs. 21885.62 high.
• Information Technology and Consumer Discretionary sector shares led gainers in the first half, semiconductor shares rebounding from better selling last week: Broadcom +4.58%, Oracle +2.84%, Synopsys +2.70%, Palantir Technologies +2.61% and NVIDIA +1.98%.
• Consumer Discretionary sector was buoyed by: Booking Holdings +2.23%, Wynn Resorts +2.18%, Amazon.com +1.99% and DoorDash +1.75%.
• On the flipside, Real Estate and Health Care sector shares led decliners in the first half. Investment trust shares weighed on the Real Estate sector with SBA Communications -4.44%, Crown Castle -4.19%, American Tower -4.08% and Weyerhaeuser-2.45%.
• Meanwhile, pharmaceutical shares weighed on the Health Care sector: Moderna -3.94%, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals -3.23%, Dexcom -2.76% and CVS Health -2.32%.

The policy process for fiscal measures and structural reforms in Germany appears to be starting to take shape according to reports filtering through over the weekend. This comes amid the government's "autumn of reforms" being set to start this week, and means a) income tax changes, b) social security net cuts and c) pension system reform are all being discussed if not in the pipeline. The backdrop remains weak growth, a E30bln+ gap in the 2027 budget as well as right-wing AfD polling close to the largest party nationally. Meaningful progress on the widely heralded "bureaucracy reforms" remains to be observed, and the coalition takes split views on how to proceed.

Details below:

• On pensions, ideas being floated include the abandonment of retirement with 63 years (which is in place for some age groups) but other representatives proposed raising the retirement age to 70 years more altogether.
• On income taxes, finance minister Klingbeil as well as a single CDU budget policy spokesman have both previously floated increases for high earners but this was met with wide criticism by other CDU representatives, referring to the coalition agreement, which makes no mention of this.
• A commission for deeper welfare state reform ("modernization" and "bureaucracy reduction") is set in place and targets publishing proposals by the end of year. Chancellor Merz plans E5bln of savings in unemployment benefits (around 10% of respective expenditure) through such a system reform. Labour minister Bas (SPD) has strongly argued against the proclaimed magnitude of savings but terms between her and Merz eased afterwards again.

• EUR/USD: $1.1530-50(E1.2bln), $1.1600(E519mln), $1.1650-70(E1.0bln), $1.1685-05(E2.3bln), $1.1750(E835mln), $1.1790-00(E1.2bln), $1.1885-90(E994mln)
• USD/JPY: Y145.85-00($1.4bln), Y150.00($1.1bln)
• GBP/USD: $1.3595-20(Gbp1.0bln)