UK gilts narrowly mixed ahead of November employment report, host of PMIs

The United Kingdom’s gilts remained narrowly mixed during European trading hours Monday ahead of the country’s employment report for the month of November, scheduled to be released on January 21 by 09:30GMT and a host of PMIs, due for release by end of this week.

The yield on the benchmark 10-year gilts, traded flat at 0.635 percent, the 30-year yield surged 1-1/2 basis points to 1.175 percent while the yield on the short-term 2-year suffered 1-1/2 basis points to 0.422 percent by 11:10GMT.

After last Friday’s very weak retail sales figures coming on the back of some poor monthly GDP and inflation data, the probability of monetary policy action at the MPC’s end-January meeting has unsurprisingly risen sharply – market implied probabilities attached a more than 70 percent chance of a 25bp cut, Daiwa Capital Markets reported.

And in the absence of a significant upside surprise to this Friday’s flash PMIs, a cut to 0.50 percent shall be forthcoming on January 30. The expectation is for improvements in the manufacturing and services indices to push the composite PMI back above 50 for the first time since August, the report added.

The consensus forecast for the composite PMI of 50.5, however, would seem unlikely to prevent a rate cut at the next MPC meeting. Other top-tier releases due this week will also factor into the BoE’s policy judgement, most notably tomorrow’s labour market report. This is expected to report a stable unemployment rate at 3.8 percent in the three months to November, and a rebound in job growth to above 100k 3m/3m for the first time since June, Daiwa further noted in the report.

Meanwhile, the FTSE 100 remained tad -0.45 percent up at 7,638.95 by 11:15GMT.