Greek govt bond trade volume rises sharply

The central bank said that out of the 635 orders executed on trading platform HDAT last month, 71.9 percent were sell orders and 28.1 percent were buy orders.

Greece's borrowing costs have surged as markets fret over its massive debt load. The average monthly spread between Greek and German 10-year bond yields widened to an average of 862 basis points in February from 827 bps in January.

On Friday the spread was around 968 bps.

Some 18.9 billion euros of government paper had changed hands in February 2010.

Greek government bond yields rose in February, in line with the rest of the euro zone's periphery.

The 3-year benchmark bond yield rose 107 basis points to 14.3 percent. In longer tenors, the 10-year yield rose 37 bps to 11.8 percent with 30-year paper yielding 8.84 percent, up 19 bps.

As a result, Greece's yield curve steepened while remaining inverted, with the difference between the 30- and 3-year bond yields at 544 bps at end-February from 456 bps in January.

Copyright Reuters, 2011

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