(fxcue news) - European stocks may open flat to slightly higher on Monday as a surprise rate cut by China's central bank saw investors expecting near-term improvement in economic momentum. Investors are also likely to watch U.S. political developments closely after President Joe Biden said he is standing down and will not run for re-election. Biden offered his "full support and endorsement" for Vice-President Kamala Harris as the presidential nominee for the Democratic Party. Asian markets were mostly lower following losses on Wall Street Friday. The dollar edged lower and U.S. futures were little changed ahead of key U.S. core PCE and PMI data due this week. Also, the advanced Q2 growth forecast is slated to be announced on Thursday. Investors also await key U.S. earnings, with Coca-Cola (KO), Alphabet (GOOGL), Tesla (TSLA), and IBM Corp. (IBM) among the companies due to report their quarterly results this week. Closer home, earnings from a swathe of European banks and PMI data out of the euro zone will be in focus this week. Oil and gold prices were seeing modest gains in Asian trade due to dollar weakness. U.S. stocks ended firmly in the red on Friday amid a continued selloff in technology stocks. Also, a major global technical outage added uncertainty to an already-anxious market. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite shed 0.8 percent and the S&P 500 gave up 0.7 percent to post their biggest weekly losses since April while the Dow declined 0.9 percent and managed to post a slight gain for the week. European stocks closed lower on Friday on the back of downbeat earnings and falling commodity prices on deepening Sino-U.S. trade tensions. The pan European STOXX 600 fell 0.8 percent. The German DAX lost 1 percent, France's CAC 40 slid 0.7 percent and the U.K.'s FTSE dipped 0.6 percent.