Over the week, cyclical sectors paced the advance amid rising stimulus hopes. However, those hopes remain on hold for the time being after the Bank of England made no changes to its policy stance on Thursday. Expectations remain high that the central bank will ease when it meets again in August. Before then, the Bank of Japan will meet on July 28 and 29 amid elevated expectations that new stimulus measures will be announced at the end of the meeting.

This week, we get more housing data on Tuesday (housing starts and building permits) as well as Thursday (existing home sales). The index of leading economic indicators is also released on Thursday. June housing starts and permits are expected to show further grinding recovery.

However, we see less scope for existing home sales) to rise, in part because there has been relatively little residential construction in this business cycle compared to previous expansions. This is due to both excessive building from 2001 to 2007 and much tighter residential mortgage lending standards.

Also this week, companies like Netflix, Yahoo or Bank of America among others will release its quarterly earnings.