US and Europe stocks finished profoundly lower on Tuesday

Wall Street closed in negative territory on Tuesday, failing to prolong the rally from Monday as the sentiment was influenced by the global negative mood, the bad US data and the swinging oil prices.

Yesterday the US stocks recorded the biggest loss for a week amid the negative data on consumer confidence and depreciation of oil caused by the refusal of Saudi Arabia to cut production. Ultimately energy companies recorded a fall, dragging and banking sectors. S&P 500 closed with a decline of 1.25%  at 1,921.28 points, supported only by utility companies. Dow Jones wrote off 1.1% to end at 16,431.85 points, while Nasdaq Composite finished with a drop of 1.47% at 4,503.58 points.

A piece of major news is the slump of CB’s consumer confidence, which hinted deterioration in optimism at a level of 92.2 points in February and missed the forecast of 97.2 points.  Sales of existing homes rose by 0.4% to 5.47 million units in January, which is a stronger result having in mind the expected 2.5% drop to 5.32 million units.

Earlier in the day European stocks fell from a three-week peak, erasing most of Monday's gains. Stoxx Europe 600 fell 1.2%, while DAX 30 wrote off 1.6%. CAC 40 wiped 1.4 % FTSE 100 closed 1.3% lower.

Tuesday economic calendar in Europe offered only German data, starting with the fourth-quarter report on GDP. The German economy grew as expected and expanded 0.3% , same as the quarter before, while it increased 2.1% on a yearly and non-seasonally adjusted basis.

Meanwhile the IFO index increased to 112.9 points in February from the 112.5 in January, while the expectations reached 99.8 points, a worse figure compared to the 102.4 points a month ago.