LONDON, July 11 (Reuters) - Euro zone bond yields
resumed their rise on Tuesday as focus shifted to the pace of monetary
tightening in the United States and when the Federal Reserve might start
unwinding its massive balance sheet.
Yields
across the bloc fell on Monday, retracing some of the sharp rise seen
over the last two weeks in which the benchmark German 10-year yield has
more than doubled on the growing view that the European Central Bank
will begin reining in its ultra-loose policy sooner rather than later.
They
remained under upward pressure after ECB director Benoit Coeure said on
Tuesday that a weaker euro is neither a means nor a goal of the central
bank's massive bond purchases.
Analysts said
they were also looking ahead to a speech by Fed Governor Lael Brainard
on the topic of
normalising central banks' balance sheets, while Fed
chair Janet Yellen's semi-annual testimony to Congress follows on
Wednesday.
San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank
President John Williams said earlier on Tuesday in Sydney that he
expected the Fed to start unwinding its massive balance sheet in the
next few months and for it to raise rates one more time this year.
"Given
the recent sensitivity to central bank talk about unwinding emergency
stimulus, today's speech by the Fed's Brainard... looks like a
compelling read before Yellen's testimony moves into focus tomorrow,"
said Padhraic Garvey, global head of debt and rates strategy at ING.
Germany's
10-year yield was up 2 basis points on Tuesday at 0.56 percent,
reversing some of a near 4 basis point fall on Monday, which was the
biggest daily drop in around a month.
That drop
appears to have been just a pause in a sell-off that has seen Germany's
10-year yield more than double from the 0.25 percent it was at on June
27, the day ECB President Mario Draghi hinted at the possibility of
tweaking the central bank's aggressive stimulus in a speech in Sintra,
Portugal.
The yield remains within touching distance of an 18-month high of 0.583 percent hit in early trading on Monday.
Other euro zone bond yields were up 1-4 bps on the day.
"The
concerted global pivot toward reduced monetary policy stimulus has left
investors needing to balance the improved attractiveness of government
bond yields after the recent selloff with anxiety over portfolio
vulnerability to renewed selling pressures as central banks scale back
liquidity," said Lena Komileva, managing director at G+ Economics.
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