German bunds flat ahead of ECB President Lagarde’s speech, January ZEW economic sentiment index

The German bunds remained tad higher during European trading session Monday ahead of the European Central Bank (ECB) President Christine Lagarde’s speech, scheduled to be delivered today by 18:30GMT and the country’s ZEW economic sentiment index for the month of January, due for release today on 10:00GMT.

The German 10-year bond yield, which move inversely to its price, hovered around -0.210 percent, the yield on 30-year note traded flat at 0.303 percent and the yield on short-term 2-year too remained steady at -0.591 percent by 10:05GMT.

Like in Japan, this week will also bring the latest policy meeting of the ECB’s Governing Council, only the second to be chaired by Christine Lagarde. But this seems likely to be relatively uneventful. There seems no reason whatsoever for a change of monetary policy or forward guidance, Daiwa Capital Markets reported.

And with no new economic forecasts to be published, the Governing Council’s overall assessment of economic conditions will not change either, the report added.

And, as in December, she might judge the downside risks to the economic outlook to have become even less skewed to the downside. Most notable might be what Lagarde has to say about the ECB’s strategic policy review, although with the work barely underway she will certainly not pre-empt its findings, Daiwa further commented in the report.

Meanwhile, the German DAX edged tad -0.09 percent down to 13,515.44 by 10:10GMT.