Bonds: Investors take positions ahead of US jobs report, BoE's Carney
These were the movements on some of the most widely-followed 10-year sovereign bond yields:
US: 2.35% (+2bp)
UK: 1.10% (+1bp)
France: 0.26% (+1bp)
Germany: 0.90% (-2bp)
Italy: 2.27% (-0bp)
Spain: 1.63% (+1bp)
Greece: 7.13% (+2bp)
Portugal: 3.90% (-5bp)
Japan: 0.06% (0bp)
Prices on longer-dated Gilts dipped ahead of the monthly US jobs report due out the next day, as investors globally were caught in a tug of war between a potentially 'hawkish' set of Federal Reserve minutes published on Wednesday evening and remarks from US House speaker Paul Ryan that tax cuts might take longer to approve than had been expected
Analysts at HSBC and Deutsche Bank expected the March non-farm payrolls report to see a small surprise to the downside, with the former telling clients to expect a figure of 155,000 (consensus: 180,000) as pay-back for February's mild weather-induced rise.
As regards Ryan, on Wednesday evening he reportedly said that "the House has a tax cut plan but the Senate doesn't quite have one yet. They're working on one. The White House hasn't nailed it down."
Worse, he added it would take longer to implement than repealing Obamacare.
"With a balance sheet of $4.5trn and Fed chief Janet Yellen’s term coming to an end in January next year, the prospect of imminent reductions in the Fed’s balance sheet appears to have shaken up expectations about what to expect from the Fed in the coming months, and what it might mean for the pace of future rate rises.
"It’s also important to weigh the effects that House speaker Paul Ryan’s remarks have had, given that an awful lot of recent gains in stock markets have been predicated on a Trump stimulus plan," said Michael Hewson, chief market analyst at CMC Markets UK.
No major economic data was released in the UK on Thursday, although investors are waiting on the release of a barrage of figures on house prices, industrial production, construction output and on visible trade.
Governor Mark Carney is also scheduled to speak at a Reuters event in Canary Wharf at 1000 GMT.
Speeches from European Central Bank boss Mario Draghi and chief economist Peter Praet, as well as the latest set of ECB minutes, also drew a fair a bit of attention during the first half of the session.
The general gist of the minutes and their remarks was that an early hike in the ECB's deposit rate is not imminent.
Nonetheless, the minutes did reveal growing divergences among the members of the Governing Council, which in time would force a compromise, in the form of a first slight hike in the deposit rate before the ECB had completely wound down its QE programme, Barclays said.
The date for investors to pencil into their diaries was the first quarter of 2018, the broker's economists added.
Also in Eurozone news, Greece got some attention after unemployment data from the Mediterranean country showed the rate of joblessness rose from 23.1% in December to 23.5% in January, amid the ongoing stalemate over the country's next installment of financial aid and ahead of a Eurogroup meeting in Malta, on Friday.