World stocks fell for the seventh straight session on Tuesday on persistent worries over Ireland's debt problems and China's fiscal tightening, and Irish debt yields rose further before talks on the crisis.
Concerns over more official steps in China to cool its liquidity-driven asset price rally also weighed on copper as the country is a major consumer of commodities, while U.S. Treasuries stabilised following a sharp sell-off.
U.S. stock index futures fell, signalling a weak open on Wall Street.
Ireland's bond yields rose ahead of euro zone talks in Brussels later in the day to find a way out of Ireland's debt problem. Dublin, however, resisted calls to seek a state bailout by contending that only its banks may need help.
"We're waiting for news. I think the market has whipped itself into a frenzy and I'm not convinced we're going to get anything substantial," a London-based trader said.
The premium investors demand to hold Irish government bonds rather than German benchmarks widened to 575 basis points from around 562 bps at Monday's settlement.
The cost of insuring against debt default in Ireland, Portugal and Greece crept higher. Ireland's five-year credit default swaps rose 11 basis points to 508 bps, while those for Portugal were up 10 bps to 422 bps.
Irish stocks fell 0.8%, Spain's share benchmark shed 1.5% and the Thomson Reuters Peripheral Eurozone Countries Index eased 1.4%.
The euro was steady at $1.3585, erasing gains after a stronger-than-expected reading of German ZEW institute's economic sentiment index. Earlier in the day, the single currency hit its weakest since late September.
The dollar rose 0.3% versus a basket of currencies.
UNDER PRESSURE
U.S. stock index futures dropped 0.6 to 0.7% and Europe's FTSEurofirst 300 index eased 1.2%.
World equities measured by MSCI All-Country World Index fell 0.5%, hitting a two-week low.
In Asia, China's share benchmark lost 4%, its lowest close in a month, on renewed talk of further policy tightening, and Japan's Nikkei average fell 0.3%.
Oil lost 1.3% to trade below $84 a barrel, and copper dropped 1.6%, while safe-haven gold was steady at $1,360.20 an ounce.
Benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury yields recovered and traded at 2.9151% after hitting 2.97%, the highest level in more than three months, on worries over the future of the Federal Reserve's $600 bln bond programme.
However, New York Fed President William Dudley defended the U.S. central bank's controversial bond-buying plan and said withdrawing the programme could take years.
Credit Suisse private bank said in a note that any periphery inspired sell-off in European equities offered a buying opportunity for European export stocks.
"One silver lining in the previous bouts of Eurozone specific volatility earlier this year was the strong performance of Eurozone exporters in the context of a weaker euro," it said.
"In this respect, we believe that any euro zone indebtedness related sell-off in broad equity markets should provide a good buying opportunity for euro zone export related stocks."
