European stocks were muted on Tuesday morning, bucking a positive trend seen in Asia and the U.S. at the start of the trading week.

The pan-European Stoxx 600 hovered around the flatline in early trade, with utilities shedding 0.4% while oil and gas stocks added 0.6%.

U.S. stock futures were little changed early Tuesday morning as Wall Street looked to hold on to gains from its February hot streak.

The move in futures comes after the three major indexes set another round of record highs on Monday. The Dow and S&P 500 have now advanced for six straight sessions, while the Nasdaq Composite has finished in the green on five of those six days.

Strong earnings and improving data on the Covid and vaccination front are among the factors helping to push stocks higher, analysts said. More major tech companies are set to report earnings stateside on Tuesday afternoon, including Twitter and Cisco.

Meanwhile in Europe, the coronavirus pandemic and vaccine rollout continue to dominate headlines and market sentiment. Health experts and government officials were rallying round the AstraZeneca/University of Oxford vaccine on Monday after widespread concern following a small-scale trial that showed it offered "minimal protection" against mild disease caused by the South African variant of the virus.

With its vaccination drive falling far behind, the EU has finalized a deal with Pfizer and BioNTech for the supply of an additional 300 million doses of their Covid vaccine, a European Commission spokesman told Reuters on Monday.

Earnings remain high on the agenda, with oil major Total reporting a massive fall in annual profit before the bell. Full-year 2020 net profit came in at $4.06 billion, beating expectations of $3.86 billion, from analysts polled by Refinitiv, but reflecting a 66% drop compared with $11.8 billion for the 2019 fiscal year. Total shares climbed 1.4% in early trade.

Danish hearing aid group Demant saw its stock surge more than 11% to the top of the Stoxx 600 after comfortably beating earnings expectations for the second half of 2020.

At the bottom of the European blue chip index, Austrian chipmaker AMS slipped more than 5% despite recording an 86% jump in 2020 sales, with traders citing profit taking, according to Reuters.

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