UK gilts gain ahead of July manufacturing PMI, BoE’s monetary policy meeting

The United Kingdom’s gilts gained during European trading hours Monday ahead of the country’s manufacturing PMI for the month of July, scheduled to be released on August 1 by 14:00GMT and the Bank of England’s (BoE) monetary policy meeting, due on the same day by 16:30GMT for further direction in the debt market.

The yield on the benchmark 10-year gilts, plunged 3 basis points to 0.658 percent, the 30-year yield rose slipped nearly 1-1/2 basis points to 1.334 percent and the yield on the short-term 2-year slumped nearly 2-1/2 basis points to 0.459 percent by 10:40GMT.

The main events in the UK will come on Thursday with the BoE to announce its latest monetary policy decision and publish its August Inflation Report. We expect no changes to policy, with Bank Rate set to be left at 0.75 percent. But with Carney having recently noted increased downside risks to global and UK GDP growth, we would expect the MPC to be more downbeat about the near-term outlook, Daiwa Capital Markets reported.

"And with Bank staff last month having revised down their Q2 GDP forecast from 0.2 percent q/q to zero percent q/q, we expect the Inflation Report to reveal downward revisions to the Bank’s GDP growth forecasts and possibly its inflation projection too," the report added.

Meanwhile, the FTSE 100 rose 1.23 percent to 7,641.75 by 10:50GMT.