Market information

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Following Germany, also the Netherlands successfully sold EUR 3.1 billion of bonds at a record low interest rate yesterday. The Netherlands paid just 0.853% on government bonds with a maturity of three years. Austria on the other hand, paid a higher interest rate (2.213%) than in August (1.960%) on the five-year government bonds at yesterday’s auction. In comparison, the Dutch five-year rate is just below the 1.2%, the Spanish rate is more than double the Austrian rate. Spain and Italy will sell their bonds in an auction later this week.

Bloomberg and the Swiss Bank UBS predict a bigger slowdown of the Chinese import growth in 2011 than expected. The decline in growth is bad news for the global economy and especially for those countries that sell raw materials in China.

The central bank of Portugal has changed their prognosis for 2012. According to them, Portugal should prepare itself for an even deeper recession. Earlier predictions showed a contraction of the Portuguese economy this year of 2,2%. Yesterday, the central bank announced a predicted decline of 3.1%. A bright spot is that Portuguese economy is expected to grow slightly again in 2013.

Philips’ profit warning didn’t put pressure on the AEX yesterday. The AEX closed 1.2% higher at 315.50 points. The Midcap rose 1.4% to 479.06 points. The figures of Aluminum producer Alcoa encouraged investors on Wall Street slightly. The Dow Jones index closed 0.56% higher. The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq gained 0.89% and 0.97% respectively. The Nikkei in Tokyo followed the Dow Jones index and closed 0.3% higher.

The 6M Euribor remained unchanged at 1.55%. The 10Y Swap decreased by 2 basis points to 2.37%.

In the attachment below, today’s market data on money and capital market rates as well as other rates are presented. For more history of these rates or other rates feel free to ask: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

Download market data