World stocks slipped on Monday ahead of a blizzard of earnings from the world's biggest firms and as wary investors watched U.S. bond yields approach peaks that have triggered market spasms in the past. The on 10-year U.S. Treasurys hit its highest level since January 2014 at 2.99 percent, pushing the gap — or spread — to German bonds to the widest in 29 years and the dollar higher in the process. Traders were also getting a global round of economic surveys that should show in the coming days if economic softness in the first quarter was just a passing phase linked to wintery weather and the Lunar New Year holidays in Asia.

The 3 percent barrier