German bunds narrowly mixed ahead of December unemployment change, Eurozone CPI data

The German bunds remained narrowly mixed during European session Thursday ahead of the country’s unemployment change data, for December, scheduled to be released on January 4 by 08:55GMT, besides the Eurozone’s consumer price inflation (CPI) data for the similar period, also due on the same day by 10:00GMT.

The German 10-year bond yields, which move inversely to its price, hovered around 0.174 percent, the yield on 30-year note rose nearly 1 basis point to 0.814 percent and the yield on short-term 2-year remained flat at -0.609 percent by 10:00GMT.

Thursday should be a relatively uneventful day for euro area economic data with the ECB's bank lending figures for November arguably most notable. The October numbers showed the strongest flow of new lending to households in more than a decade but a sharp slowdown in the flow of new loans to non-financial corporations. In the markets, Spain will sell 3-year, 5-year and 10-year bonds, Daiwa Capital Markets Research reported.

The euro area's manufacturers appear to have ended 2018 on a downbeat note, and the near-term outlook for the sector looks similarly gloomy. With demand evidently sluggish, and energy prices having fallen too, inflationary pressures in the sector unsurprisingly seem to be dissipating too, with the euro area input and output price PMIs confirmed at their lowest levels in more than a year.

So, from the ECB's perspective, perhaps the only positive in the survey came from the employment PMIs, which continued to signal job growth in manufacturing firms, albeit at the softest pace in more than two years, the report added.

Meanwhile, the German DAX fell 1.12 percent to 10,461.93 by 10:15GMT.