LONDON: Bond yields across the euro area rose on Wednesday, as a note of caution set in after a run of sharp falls over the previous three sessions pushed borrowing costs in much of the region to five-week lows.
That move lower was driven by expectation that the European Central Bank (ECB), which meets next Thursday, could signal a prolonged scaling back of its monetary stimulus scheme.
Reuters reported last week that policymakers are broadly in agreement about extending asset purchases at a lower volume, with views converging on a nine-month extension.
Officials including ECB chief Mario Draghi, Chief Economist Peter Praet and executive board member Benoit Coeure were on the line-up for Wednesday. But in the absence of any fresh drivers, the bond price rally that has pushed down yields petered out.
Easy monetary policy gives euro zone governments a window of opportunity to enact reforms, Draghi said.
Germany's 10-year bond yield was up 2 basis points (bps) at 0.38 percent, pulling back from five-week lows hit on Tuesday at around 0.35 percent.
Across the euro area, yields were 1-4 bps higher on the day. Italian yields climbed from five-week lows briefly touched earlier at 2.01 percent.
"We have been drifting lower in the past few days and now there is a bounce in yields, which makes sense to me," said ING senior rates strategist Martin van Vliet. "We are now looking at a paralysis in markets ahead of the ECB meeting."
A growing view that ECB asset purchases will go on lower for longer comes at a time when markets are positioning for further US rate increases, pushing two-year US Treasury yields to nine-year highs this week.
That divergence has stretched the gap between US and German bonds in recent days.
The difference between 10-year bond yields in the United States and Germany is about 194 bps and close to its widest in four months.
The gap between short-dated US Treasury yields and their German counterparts is about 229 bps and close to its widest in 18 years.
"We would point at the acceleration of the UST-Bund widening this week as evidence that the policy divergence trade is setting in and that euro zone government bonds can rally further," Mizuho analysts said in a note.
Political noise from Spain and Portugal helps to explain underperformance of peripheral government bonds, analysts said.
Portugal's interior minister resigned on Wednesday after more than a hundred deaths from forest fires and the government faces a no-confidence vote over its handling of the fires.
Spain meanwhile appealed to Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont to "act sensibly" on Wednesday, 24 hours before a government deadline for the region to renounce a bid for independence.
Comments
Comments are closed for this article.