Eurozone government bond yields yesterday held close to recent one-month lows as a global stock market dip led by US tech giant Amazon.com Inc sparked interest in safe-haven assets.
High-grade eurozone bonds were in demand, while southern European debt yields rose a touch ahead of the release of manufacturing surveys from the four largest eurozone economies.
Investors often sell bonds at the start of April as quarter-end demand unwinds, but most eurozone yields yesterday fell in early trade before trading flat as the session wore on.
“The big question is how far the current tremor in the equity market will affect bonds given it is driven by a single company — even if it is a tech giant having a huge market weight,” DZ Bank AG strategist Christian Lenk said.
Shares of Amazon on Monday fell 6 percent after US President Donald Trump attacked the online retailer over the pricing of its deliveries through the US Postal Service and promised unspecified changes.
That affected global stocks, in turn fueling bids for safer assets and 10-year US Treasury yields dropped to a near two-month low of 2.71 percent on Monday.
Yesterday, German 10-year government bond yields briefly dropped to 0.48 percent, close to a two-and-half-month low of 0.473 percent hit last week.
While economic news in the single-currency bloc has continued to be positive this year, it is no longer surprising on the upside as it was through last year.
So, any failure to meet expectations could drive further interest in bonds as investors ratchet back expectations for rate hikes from the European Central Bank.
“It will be interesting to see which way the data goes ahead of eurozone inflation numbers tomorrow [today],” Lenk said.
To many, Tatu City on the outskirts of Nairobi looks like a success. The first city entirely built by a private company to be operational in east Africa, with about 25,000 people living and working there, it accounts for about two-thirds of all foreign investment in Kenya. Its low-tax status has attracted more than 100 businesses including Heineken, coffee brand Dormans, and the biggest call-center and cold-chain transport firms in the region. However, to some local politicians, Tatu City has looked more like a target for extortion. A parade of governors have demanded land worth millions of dollars in exchange
An Indonesian animated movie is smashing regional box office records and could be set for wider success as it prepares to open beyond the Southeast Asian archipelago’s silver screens. Jumbo — a film based on the adventures of main character, Don, a large orphaned Indonesian boy facing bullying at school — last month became the highest-grossing Southeast Asian animated film, raking in more than US$8 million. Released at the end of March to coincide with the Eid holidays after the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan, the movie has hit 8 million ticket sales, the third-highest in Indonesian cinema history, Film
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) revenue jumped 48 percent last month, underscoring how electronics firms scrambled to acquire essential components before global tariffs took effect. The main chipmaker for Apple Inc and Nvidia Corp reported monthly sales of NT$349.6 billion (US$11.6 billion). That compares with the average analysts’ estimate for a 38 percent rise in second-quarter revenue. US President Donald Trump’s trade war is prompting economists to retool GDP forecasts worldwide, casting doubt over the outlook for everything from iPhone demand to computing and datacenter construction. However, TSMC — a barometer for global tech spending given its central role in the
Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯), an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) designer specializing in server chips, expects revenue to decline this year due to sagging demand for 5-nanometer artificial intelligence (AI) chips from a North America-based major customer, a company executive said yesterday. That would be the first contraction in revenue for Alchip as it has been enjoying strong revenue growth over the past few years, benefiting from cloud-service providers’ moves to reduce dependence on Nvidia Corp’s expensive AI chips by building their own AI accelerator by outsourcing chip design. The 5-nanometer chip was supposed to be a new growth engine as the lifecycle
RSS