LONDON: Germany's benchmark 10-year bond yield nudged off a one-week low on Tuesday after strong data from the euro zone's two biggest economies pointed to resilience in the face of the UK's shock vote to leave the European Union.
German private sector growth slowed in August, but remained robust overall, a purchasing managers' index showed, suggesting Europe's biggest economy is set to keep on expanding in the summer months after it grew more than expected in the second quarter.
France's private sector grew at its fastest pace in 10 months.
The eurozone figures are closely watched for evidence of the Brexit impact on the UK's largest trading partner, said Craig Erlam, senior market analyst at OANDA.
"While it's too early to get this from the hard data, releases like the PMIs are a good source of early insight into how the region will respond," he said.
The yield on Germany's 10-year bond was up marginally at minus 0.08 percent, off a one-week low touched in early trade. France's 10-year bond also edged higher to a yield of 0.15 percent, according to Tradeweb.
"It seems be a technical market - we haven't seen much supply of late and investors have cash to put to work and are picking up some bonds," said David Schnautz, an analyst at Commerzbank.
"We could be back to normal next week when supply comes back properly," he said.
Germany on Wednesday plans to sell 4 billion euros of five-year debt, a tap of its zero percent October 2021 notes. Analysts believe Finland may return to the market with a new bond via syndication either this week or the next.
The issuer has in the past said it will look at a five-year maturity, but analysts pointed out that a longer tenor has not been excluded.
"If anything, we could imagine that agency moving out towards the seven-year tenor, given that five-year rates trade below the deposit facility rate threshold for ECB purchases," strategists at ING said in a note.
Finland's five-year bonds were yielding minus 0.46 percent on Tuesday morning.
Trading in euro zone bonds is likely to remain cagey ahead of a meeting of central bankers at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, later this week.
US Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen is scheduled to speak on Friday and is largely expected to signal that the central bank is preparing to hike rates once again.
"Yellen's speech on Friday remains the headline event this week and I think we could continue to see an element of caution in the markets in the lead up to this," said Erlam.
US 10-year yields briefly hit a two-week high of 1.60 percent earlier on Monday before tracking back to 1.55 percent by Tuesday morning.
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