Markets are climbing higher

European markets have continued their positive start to the week.

The benchmark Shanghai Composite has fallen by a further 1.44%, extending its losses since hitting a multi-year peak on June 12 to 41.33%, but economic data wasn't as bad as investors were expecting.

"Overnight Chinese export figures were down 5.5%, however this was better than the expected fall of 6.0% but still confirms what now is obvious to al that the Chinese economy is slowing, although the Eurozone, UK and US would all welcome growth at these levels.," Mic Mills, head of client services at CapitalIndex, said in an e-mail.

Meanwhile, US stock markets will reopen later today after the Labour Day break. The big question still unanswered is whether the US Federal Reserve will raise rates this month.

Here's the European share market scoreboard:

UK's FTSE: +1.12%

Germany's DAX: +1.33%

France's CAC40: +0.98%

Spain's IBEX: +0.75%

And this is what's happened to the Euro Stoxx 50, which is an index of Europe's biggest publicly listed companies. It opened up 1.05%:

Meanwhile, Brent crude oil is rallying after several days of declines. It's up over 1%: