14 February 2012 at 14:30 GMT
Stocks are mixed on good bond auctions and disapppointing US retail sales
European stocks started the session in negative territory but advanced following good bond auctions first in Spain and later in Italy with the latter seing its 2014 bond auction yield drop to 3.41 percent from 4.83 percent on January 13. Stocks remained in the green until the US retail sales report for January was released. It printed a 0.4 percent MoM increase compared to 0.8 percent expected and a minor downward revision of December's figure.
Source: Bloomberg L.P.
As the chart shows, the DAX Index immediately plummeted and the S&P 500 Index futures are currently down 0.4 percent.
Earlier in the session investors also got better than expected ZEW survey figures across the board for February.
We expect the slightly disappointing retail sales to linger somewhat on US stocks as investors await tomorrow's Eurozone advance fourth quarter GDP figures and US industrial production numbers from January.