Bonds: French yields rise on latest election poll results
These were the movements in some of the most widely-followed 10-year sovereign bond yields:
US: 2.36% (-2bp)
UK: 1.08% (+1bp)
Germany: 0.21% (-2bp)
France: 0.93% (+4bp)
Italy: 2.24% (+2bp)
Spain: 1.61% (-1bp)
Portugal: 3.82% (-4bp)
Greece: 6.77% (-10bp)
Japan: 0.06% (-0bp)
Gilts underperformed slightly at the start of two holiday-shortened weeks with geopolitical risks squarely in focus on Monday.
With under two weeks to go until the first round of voting in France's presidential elections, on 23 April, separate polls at the weekend and early on Monday showed far-Left French president candidate Jean Luc Melenchon stage a comeback in voters' intention.
Several analysts picked up on that development, whilst others chose to remind clients that roughly 40% of the electorate was still undecided, meaning that in any case there was uncertainty to be had.
Referencing Bloomberg's latest poll of polls for the French vote, the gap between Melenchon and centrist candidate Emanuelle Macron had tightened to just five points from 14 in just over two weeks, UniCredit Research noted.
"It is therefore not surprising to see another wave of nervousness among market participants," UniCredit said.
For his part, Jim Reid at Deutsche Bank added: "While the most likely outcome remains a second round between Macron and Le Pen, the race to qualify for the second round has tightened in the last week, so it’s one to keep an eye on over the next couple of weeks."
Acting as a backdrop, investors were monitoring the news-flow surrounding recent events in Syria ahead of a meeting between US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and his Russian counterpart scheduled for the next day.
North Korea was also on traders' radar as the US redeployed a carrier group towards those waters.
On the purely economic front, data was sparse on the economic calendar, with what few traders were left at their desks looking out to a speech from Fed chair Janet Yellen in the evening.
In the event, speaking at the University of Michigan, Yellen said the US rate of unemployment had fallen a bit below what she and her fellow rate-setters believed was the lowest sustainable level.
However, at 1.8% the core PCE price deflator was still running slightly below the central bank's 2.0% target.
To take note of, after the close of trading in London, on 7 April, New York Fed chair William Dudley clarified comments earlier in the week that a pause in interest rates hikes was possible when the monetary authority decided to begin shrinking its balance sheet.
"Some people misconstrued what I said last week. I said a little pause. A pause is pretty short already; I think a little pause is even shorter than that," Dudley said.
Data on UK CPI for March was scheduled for release on Tuesday at 0930 GMT.