Bonds: French-German yield spread widens, Greek bonds jump
This is how the yields on some of the most widely-followed 10-year sovereign government bonds behaved:
US: 2.43% (+1bp)
UK: 1.24% (+1bp)
Germany: 0.30% (+0bp)
France: 1.09% (+3bp)
Spain: 1.68% (+7bp)
Italy: 2.25% (+7bp)
Japan: 0.10% (+0bp)
Portugal: 4.03% (+4bp)
Greece: 7.22% (-32bp)
Prices for longer-dated Gilts slipped, weighed down by relatively hawkish comments from several US rate-setters, amid simmering worries ahead of the French presidential elections which weighed on euro area periphery debt.
Greek bonds, on the other hand, outperformed by a wide margin on news that inspectors from its Troika of lenders were headed back towards Athens.
That was especially apparent in the country´s short-term debt, with the yield at the two-year tenor down by 102 basis points.
Acting as a backdrop, the president of the Federal Reserve bank of San Francisco, John Williams, said that
absent changes in fiscal, trade or regulatory policy a rate path of three interest rate hikes in 2017 and 2018 "makes sense", he said.
He also indicated that for now the Fed had enough information at its disposal to continue on a gradual path of policy tightening.
His peers at the Minneapolis and Philadelphia Feds also appeared to buy into the notion - to varying degrees - that guidance for three rate hikes in 2017 was appropriate.
Meanwhile, and on the Continent, markets were also reacting to the results of an Elabe poll showing that the projected degree of support for Le Pen had increased from 26.0% one month ago to 27.5%.
That saw the yield spread between French and German bonds at the 10-year tenor widen to over four-and-a-half year highs.