German bunds narrowly mixed amid muted trading session ahead of December trade balance

The German bunds remained narrowly mixed during European trading session Thursday amid a muted trading session that witnessed data of little economic significance ahead of the country’s trade balance for the month of December, scheduled to be released on February 7 by 07:00GMT.

The German 10-year bond yield, which move inversely to its price, gained nearly 1 basis point to -0.362 percent, the long-term 30-year yield remained tad down at 0.159 percent and the yield on short-term 2-year hovered around -0.637 percent by 10:45GMT.

German factory orders ended 2019 on a disappointingly soft note, falling 2.1 percent m/m, the most since February. Following a revised 0.8 percent m/m drop in November, that left them down a whopping 8.7 percent y/y, the steepest annual decline since the global financial crisis more than a decade ago, Daiwa Capital Markets reported.

And so, over Q4 as a whole, they were down for a fourth consecutive quarter (and a seventh quarter out of the past eight), falling 0.6 percent 3m/3m to suggest that the long-awaited recovery in German manufacturing will remain elusive for a while yet, the report added.

Meanwhile, the German DAX traded tad 0.55 percent higher at 13,552.43 by 10:50GMT.