Bonds: Calm ahead of Fed minutes but Greek debt under pressure

These were the movements in some of the most widely-followed 10-year sovereign bond yields:

US: 2.29% (+1bp)

UK: 1.07% (-1bp)
Germany: 0.40% (-1bp)
France: 0.84% (-1bp)
Spain: 1.61% (-1bp)
Italy: 2.14% (+2bp)
Portugal: 3.23% (+6bp)
Japan: 0.05% (+0bp)
Greece: 6.06% (+28bp)

Gilts edged higher as investors waited on the release of the minutes of the US central bank's last policy meeting amid dovish remarks from top European Central Bank officials.

In particular, investors were hoping for more details on how US rate-setters were planning to go about starting to shrink the central bank-s balance sheet.

Against that backdrop, speaking in Madrid ECB chief Mario Draghi may have (to an extent) dashed some investors' hopes that the Governing Council might subtly change its policy bias at its next meeting, in June, which would help many euro area lenders' margins.

In Draghi's opinion, there were no financial stability risks in the currency bloc.

That meant there was no reason to "deviate from the indications we have been consistently providing in the introductory statement to our press conferences."

Earlier in the day, ECB chief economist Peter Praet indicated policymakers need to be more confident that inflation was on a durable path towards the monetary authority's target of just below 2% before making any changes in their risk assessment.

That meant that a shift in the ECB's policy bias at its June meeting was unlikely, but there were others such as fellow Governing Council member Benoit Coeure who had recently argued for the need to begin moving to a less accomodative stance.

Greek bonds came under selling pressure after the International Monetary Fund and its other creditors failed to reach an agreement on relieving the country's debt load.