New to markets
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Five short steps, about 15 minutes in all: what each market is, how they move each other, how to read a story here, the basics, and how to remember it.
Step 1 of 5
The six markets
Every story here is tagged with one or more of six markets. Each is a place where something is bought and sold, and its price is the market’s best guess about the future. Tap each to read what it is.
Government bonds and the interest rates they set. Buy a 10-year gilt and you lend to the UK government for ten years; the yield is the return you lock in each year. The central bank sets the overnight rate, and the market prices everything longer from where it expects that rate, inflation and government borrowing to go.
What moves it
- Central bank decisions and what policymakers say about the next ones
- Inflation and jobs data, which change those expectations
- How much governments borrow, seen in budgets and bond auctions
- Fear elsewhere: investors buy government bonds as a safe place
Example
Bond prices and yields move in opposite directions. If the 10-year yield rises from 4.00% to 4.10% (10 basis points), existing bonds paying the old, lower rate are worth less, so their price falls.
Desks watch
UK 10-year gilt yield · US 2- and 10-year Treasury yields · German 10-year Bund yield