Italy plays catch up with world bond rally

Italy has joined a huge rally in world bond markets, with yields set on Friday for their biggest weekly fall in almost a year as Rome avoided a clash with the European Union over its fiscal policy for now and hopes for monetary easing soon grow.

While bond yields across the euro area this week hit fresh milestones, Italy delivered eye-popping moves of its own with 10-year borrowing costs falling to their lowest since 2016.

Italy on Wednesday dodged the threat of EU disciplinary action over its public finances after persuading the European Commission that new measures submitted would help bring its growing debt into line with EU fiscal rules.

Speculation that the ECB could deliver not only interest-rate cuts but possibly a fresh round of monetary stimulus were fueled this week by ECB officials, pushing euro zone bond yields down further.

Investors are also betting that France’s Christine Lagarde, picked by EU leaders this week to be next ECB chief, will double down on a dovish monetary policy stance.

“The ECB plays a considerable role for the move in Italian bonds this week, but also there’s the fact that we’ve had some positive headlines on the budget deficit,” said Ross Hutchison, a fund manager at Aberdeen Standard Investments.

With more than half of the euro zone government bond universe in negative yield territory, investors piled into positive-yielding Italian bonds, known as BTPs.

Italy’s 10-year bond yield, though up six basis points on Friday at 1.73% IT10YT=RR, has slid around 35 basis points this week — set for its biggest weekly decline since September 2018.

That slide is more than double the falls seen in other major government bond yields.

The euro zone’s economic slowdown is no longer temporary, and the ECB needs to provide more stimulus to fulfil its mandate, Governing Council member Olli Rehn told German newspaper Boersen Zeitung.

“For now, the markets are reacting to expectations of ECB quantitative easing and Italy has always been one of the main beneficiaries of that,” said Mohammed Kazmi, portfolio manager for UBP in Geneva.

Two-year Italian bond yields, four basis points higher on Friday at 0.095%, briefly turned negative earlier in the week IT2YT=RR.

The closely-watched Italian/German 10-year bond yield gap had widened to 210 bps after hitting 194 bps, its tightest in over a year, on Thursday DE10IT10=RR.

“Spread levels below 200 bps look hardly sustainable beyond the medium term,” said Benjamin Schroeder, senior rates strategist at ING. “Eventually, we think the current government will clash with the EU over the 2020 budget in autumn at the latest.” Most 10-year bond yields in the bloc rose after the United States added more jobs than expected. Germany’s 10-year bond rose five basis points to a session high of -0.34%, having dropped below the ECB’s minus 0.40% deposit rate on Thursday for the first time. DE10YT=RR.

Greek yields edged up GR10YT=RR before elections this weekend. Opinion polls suggest the opposition conservatives are likely to ride a wave of anger over continuing austerity measures and seize power.