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The UK gilts slumped Friday as investors moved away from safe-haven buying amid gains in riskier assets including crude oil and equities (FTSE100 hits record high). Also, the recent jump in the country’s PMIs supported the sell-off.
The yield on the benchmark 10-year gilts, which moves inversely to its price, rose 3-1/2 basis points to 1.33 percent, the super-long 30-year bond yield climbed 3 basis points to 1.98 percent and the yield on short-term 2-year bounced 5 basis points to 0.16 percent by 10:30 GMT.
The British gilts bonds have been closely following developments in oil markets because of their impact on inflation expectations, which are well below the Bank of England's target. Crude oil prices recover by an upbeat sentiment that major oil producers will reduce output. The International benchmark Brent futures rose 0.86 percent to $57.37 and West Texas Intermediate (WTI) jumped 0.93 percent to $54.26 by 10:40 GMT.
Moreover, the UK’s services PMI for December unexpectedly rose to 56.2 from 55.2, confounding expectations of a drop to 54.7. This is the third consecutive monthly rise and is the highest since July 2015. Following the strong manufacturing, reading reported two days ago, this also takes the Composite PMI up for a fifth consecutive month to 56.7, also a 1-1/2-year high.
Additionally, activity in Britain's construction sector, which accounts for around 5.9 percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) expanded at the fastest rate in nine months in December, boosted by more house building, but sterling's weakness drove the biggest rise in costs in over five years, an industry survey showed on Wednesday.
The Markit/CIPS construction PMI rose to 54.2 in December, its strongest since March and well ahead of expectations in a Reuters poll for it to hold steady at November's reading of 52.8.
In addition, the UK manufacturing PMI for December jumped to 56.1 from 53.6 (upwardly-revised from 53.4), which comes higher than the market expectations of 53.3. This is actually the best reading since June 2014, and will confound expectations for a Brexit-related slowdown in the economy.
According to the latest Citi/YouGov survey, UK’s inflation expectations for the short term are broadly steady at 2.4 percent whilst expectations for the longer term have risen to 3.0 percent up from 2.8 percent in November.
Meanwhile, the FTSE 100 recod high of 7,189.5 by 10:30 GMT. While at 10:00 GMT, the FxWirePro's Hourly GBP Strength Index remained slightly bearish at -98.89 (lower than -75 represents purely a bearish trend).
