GLOBAL MARKETS-Stocks lower, earnings season fails to inspire

* Stock slip after Citi results, raft of earnings pending

* Dollar stronger after weak European data

* Wall Street set to open lower

By Jeremy Gaunt, European Investment Correspondent

LONDON, Jan 19 (Reuters) - World stocks slipped on Tuesday and Wall Street looked set for losses with uninspiring earnings from Citigroup keeping a bearish mood in place.

Investors are facing a wave of U.S. company earnings reports this week, hoping to get a steer on how well the micro side of the global economic recovery is faring.

In Europe, German analyst and investor sentiment fell more than expected in January with the ZEW economic sentiment index dropping to 47.2 in January from 50.4 in December, below forecasts for a fall to 49.5. [nDEP003284]

Inflation concerns also rose in Britain after UK data showed consumer price inflation leapt to 2.9 percent in December from 1.9 percent in November. [nLDE60I0VW]

U.S. markets were returning from their Martin Luther King holiday to face myriad earnings reports over the next few days.

Citigroup posted a $7.6 billion fourth-quarter loss after taking charges linked to repaying government funds. It was in line with expectations. [nN19205676]

MSCI's all-country world stock index was down around 0.4 percent. Europe's pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 <.FTEU3> dropped 0.1 percent.

Earlier, Japan's Nikkei <.N225> closed down 0.8 percent.

IBM was set to announce results later, while Bank of America and Morgan Stanley numbers are due on Wednesday. American Express , Goldman Sachs and Google results are expected on Thursday and General Electric figures are due on Friday.

"There's a feeling that Q4 2009 or the first quarter of 2010 might be as good as it gets," said Jeremy Batstone-Carr, strategist at Charles Stanley.

The U.S. earnings season has disappointed equity investors so far, perhaps because year-on-year expectations were so high given the weakness of Q4 2008.

Markets, for example, were negative last week on JPMorgan , the first major bank to report quarterly results, because of heavy losses on mortgage and credit card loans.

This was despite its quarterly profit soaring to $3.3 billion, topping Wall Street expectations.

DOLLAR CLIMBS

The dollar climbed against a basket of currencies, with the euro hit by both the ZEW figures and ongoing concerns about Greece's fiscal woes.

Greece's ballooning budget deficit and debt of more than 120 percent of GDP has triggered downgrades by debt rating agencies and hurt the euro in the past few months.

The euro was down 0.7 percent at $1.4285 and the dolar gained 0.15 percent to 90.87 Japanese yen.

Euro zone government bond futures turned negative on after earlier touching 4-week highs, tracking British gilt prices which tumbled on the unexpectedly strong UK inflation data. (Additional reporting by Brian Gorman, editing by Mike Peacock)