Good afternoon,

Across Asia, regional markets are all higher on the back of improving sentiment on Wall St and news of the weekend that China's exports grew 44% on year in June. The Shanghai Composite is the best performer, up 0.9% with resource and financial shares outperforming. Elsewhere the Hang Seng and Kospi are higher by 0.4% and 0.7% respectively while the Nikkei is trading flat.

In Australia, the ASX 200 is currently 0.2% higher at 4404, off its intra-day high of 4416. After a cautious opening the market is building on last week's advance with the materials, energy, and consumer discretionary sectors contributing a bulk of the day's gains. The financial sector is relatively flat while on the downside the industrials and healthcare sectors are modestly lower.

We've been in a bit of a holding pattern today. Following last week's gains, it's very encouraging to see that investors aren't scurrying for the sidelines ahead of tonight's Alcoa earnings announcement, which kicks of the US Q2 reporting season.

The next few weeks will see the focus shift from economic data to company earnings. Last week's gains were predicated on expectations of a relatively robust showing from US corporates, so we will need to see justification of this from positive results and outlook statements if the rally is to continue.

A total of 21 S&P 500 companies will report this week, with the market expecting earnings to rise by 27% across the board. Alcoa kicks it all off on Monday, with the likes of Intel, Google, JPMorgan, Citigroup and General Electric all due in the week. It won't just be the headline number the market looks at, but the outlook for the remainder of the year.

Provided by IG Markets