British Retail Consortium news hits UK bonds

The British Retail Consortium announced Tuesday that like-for-like sales in the UK were down 4.7 percent for the year in April, the largest fall since the Consortium started to report sales data in 1995.

Even though part of the retreat could be blamed on the early appearance of Easter this year that put holiday buying in a March rather than April this news, coupled with unfavorable manufacturing data released on Monday helped the price of UK gilts up and caused yields to fall on Tuesday in afternoon trading.

Yields on the 10-year gilt were at 4.531 percent while the 2-year gilt was yielding 4.499 percent.

In the eurozone meanwhile, yields on the two-year Schatz rose 1.7 basis points to 2.243 percent. The 10-year Bund was yielding 3.389 percent, up 2.3 basis points.

It is expected that new eurozone bonds worth around €13 billion will be available later this week. These include a new 5-year issue from Germany on Wednesday and a Thursday auction in Italy.

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