Bonds: Gilts outperform as economists squabble over CPI forecasts
These were the movements in some of the most widely-followed 10-year sovereign bond yields:
US: 1.75% (-2bp)
UK: 1.08% (-4bp)
Germany: 0.04% (-2bp)
France: 0.32% (-2bp)
Italy: 1.38% (-2bp)
Spain: 1.10% (-2bp)
Portugal: 3.25% (-1bp)
Greece: 8.45% (+1bp)
Japan: -0.05% (+0bp)
Sovereign bond yields fell back almost across the board, with Gilts outperforming on this ocassion, possibly after a government lawyer told the High Court in London that parliament will "very likely" have to ratify any British deal to quit the European Union (EU).
The comment by lawyer James Eadie, one of those representing the Theresa May-led Tory government, came amid a legal challenge on who has the right to trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty.
Gilts were thus ended the day on an upbeat note, alongside a 1% bounce in cable to 1.2304.
Acting as a backdrop, bonds were mostly higher around the world following slightly weaker than expected CPI data in the States and Chinese bank lending figures which according to some economists were weaker than might at first appear to be the case.
Traders were likely also expectant ahead of the European Central Bank's policy meeting on the following Thursday, 20 October.
US 'core' consumer prices advanced at an annualised clip of 2.2% in September (consensus: 2.3%), according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
British consumer price data on the other hand outpaced economists' forecasts, rising by 1.0% year-on-year in September (consensus: 0.9%).
After rising from 1.3% to 1.5%, core inflation in the UK was also one tenth of a percentage higher than expected.
To take note of, following the release of the figures by ONS economists at Barclays projected that CPI would peak increase by 2.3% in 2017 and hit a peak rate of 2.7% year-on-year in August.
That was considerably less than forecasts from some other economists for CPI to peak at about 3.5% at the end of 2017.
Furthermore, Barclays cautioned that: "At the headline level, the emergent picture is one of increasing core goods inflation pressure potentially driven by GBP depreciation but weakening services inflation, and we fully expect significant commentary and focus on the upside surprise. However, it appears that the September print has been influenced by erratic timing factors (for example in atypical seasonal patterns in hotel room price moves).
"As ever, we recommend paying close attention to the individual component drivers of inflation rather than reading too much into moves in the aggregate measure."
On a related note, analysts at Goldman Sachs cautioned clients that in trade-weighted terms Sterling likely still had room to fall.
At one point in the session longer-dated US Treasuries were lower, as the details of Saudi Arabia's upcoming debut sale of international bonds reached the markets.