Australian bonds flat on improved risk sentiments; eyes on Dec policy meeting minutes

The Australian bonds remained flat during Asian session of the first trading day of the week Monday despite an improvement in investors’ risk sentiments after the United States and China announced to reach a "historic" phase one trade deal.

However, investors will now eye the Reserve Bank of Australia’s (RBA) December monetary policy meeting minutes, scheduled to be released on December 17 by 00:30GMT.  

The yield on Australia’s benchmark 10-year note, which moves inversely to its price, remained flat at 1.152 percent, the yield on the long-term 30-year bond hovered around 1.756 percent and the yield on short-term 2-year barely slipped 1/2 basis point to 0.764 percent by 05:00GMT.

According to the USTR factsheet, the deal will cover longstanding issues in the areas of intellectual property, technology transfer, agriculture, financial services and currency, according to the latest report from OCBC Treasury Research.

Further, the US also said China has committed to increase imports of US goods and services over the next two years by no less than US$200 billion from the annual level in 2017, the report added.

Although the rollback of existing tariff was smaller than expected – only 15 percent additional tariff on US$120 billion products which took effect from September will be cut by half to 7.5 percent, the cancellation of planned additional tariff from December 15 – this was still supportive of global risk sentiment, OCBC further noted in the report.

Meanwhile, the S&P/ASX 200 index jumped 1.10 percent to 6,783.50 by 05:10GMT.