German 10-Year Government Bonds Little Changed Before Bill Sales

German bonds were little changed before the nation, along with Italy and France, sells more than 19 billion euros ($23 billion) of bills.

The German two-year note yield was within two basis points of an all-time low. The government will auction as much as 4 billion euros of six-month debt, with Italy selling as much as 8 billion euros of one-year securities. France plans to issue 7.2 billion euros of 84-, 161- and 343-day bills. German wholesale prices rose 2 percent from a year earlier, the Federal Statistics Office in Wiesbaden said today.

The German 10-year bund yield fell one basis point to 1.37 percent at 7:20 a.m. London time, after dropping four basis points last week. The 1.75 percent bond due July 2022 rose 0.10, or 1 euro per 1,000-euro face amount, to 103.445.

The two-year note yield was at minus 0.079 percent. It reached minus 0.097 percent on Aug. 2, matching the least since Bloomberg began tracking the data in 1990.

German bonds returned 3.6 percent this year through Aug. 10, according to indexes compiled by Bloomberg and the European Federation of Financial Analysts Societies. Italy’s debt earned 9.3 percent, French securities made 8.4 percent, while Spanish bonds lost 4.5 percent, the indexes showed.

To contact the reporters on this story: Lucy Meakin in London at lmeakin1@bloomberg.net; Keith Jenkins in London at kjenkins3@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Daniel Tilles at dtilles@bloomberg.net.