European Bond Yield Summary 4/18/12

10-Year Bond Yields:
Greece 21.12%
Portugal 12.46%
Hungary 8.96%
Spain 5.79%
Italy 5.45%
Belgium 3.37%
France 2.99%

Netherlands 2.26%
Finland 2.14%
U.K. 2.14%
U.S. 2.01%
Germany 1.75%

Yields are behaving themselves ahead of the Spanish auctions 24 hours from now, when the whole world will be watching.  Germany 2-year just went off and it was well received. Note how the Finland and U.K. yields are equal at 2.14%.  U.K. jumped about 16 basis points over the last two days the biggest jump for the safer haven grouping. Perhaps, as equities markets bounced early this week, traders moved money out of the U.K. into stocks but were not as fast to move positions out of U.S. or Germany debt markets.  Further, this shows that the U.S. and Germany are perceived as the safe havens moving forward thru the intermediate term (weeks and months), while the U.K. may be more of a shorter term holding place where money moves in and out depending on how the equities markets are moving.

Portugal remains around 12.5%, Hungary about 9%, Spain about 6% (now firmlyunder after exceeding 6% on Monday), Italy about 5.5% and France about 3%.  Use these levels moving forward to gauge whether trouble is on the rise, or not. The higher the blowout in yields the greater the trouble.  Spain bad loans now make up over 8% of total debt, a frightening statistic. Upon hearing the news, Spain equities markets tumble lower. U.S. futures are flat as a pancake.