Bonds: Yields on Gilts drop most since July 2015 in latest week

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

US: -3bp (2.12%)

UK: -3bp (1.77%)

Germany: -3bp (0.51%)

France: -4bp (0.88%)

Italy: -3bp (1.53%)

Spain: -3bp (1.71%)

Greece: -2bp (8.68%)

Japan: -2bp (0.23%)

Gilts advanced on Friday, benefiting from a renewed across-the-board risk-off trade in global capital markets, with most market commentary referencing jitters about Chinese growth as the chief factor behind the move.

Government bond yields in the UK thus ended the week about 19 basis lower than were they started, the largest drop since July of 2015 according to Bloomberg.

That came alongside the worst start to a year ever for the S&P 500 and a 10% drop in US oil futures.

Cable was not immune to all of the above, closing out the week just atop the 1.45 mark versus the Greenback - at its lowest level since the middle of 2010 - and was left nursing losses of 1.77% for the latest five-day stretch.

Data published on Friday revealed the US economy created 292,000 new jobs in December 2015, far above the 200,000 median projection from economists, alongside upwards revisions to the previous month's data.

Wage growth however stagnated, showing no improvement versus the prior month.

Even so, most, but not all, economists seemed sanguine.

In remarks to Bloomberg TV after the release of the employment data, Janus Capital's Bill Gross sounded a skeptical note on the likelihood of further Fed easing in 2016.

On a more upbeat note, Pantheon Macroeconomics told clients: "don't fret over the zero hourly earnings number; it is due to a well-established calendar quirk, which depresses reported wages in months - like Dec - when the 15th (payday for people paid semi-monthly) falls outside the survey week. We continue to expect the next hike in March, with the Fed likely to raise rates by 150bp over the course of this year as wage gains accelerate beyond their comfort point."

Analysts at Barclays were more nuanced.

They said Friday's job figures suggested labour market momentum remained "firmly" in place.

Nonetheless, “trends in private consumption growth and other components of domestic demand bear further watching, particularly if labor markets were to slow in the months ahead or if the headwinds from abroad were to intensify substantially," analysts Michael Gapen, Rob Martin and Jesse Hurwitz said in a research note sent to clients.

To take note of, heading in the Monetary Policy Committee's meeting next week, several large brokers, including Goldman Sachs pushed back their call for the first hike in Bank Rate to the last quarter of 2016.

Even that was more optimistic than then current pricing in interest rate forwards contracts, which were discounting the first rise would not arrive until after Feburuary 2017.

Lastly, German industrial production was flat in year-over-year terms in November (consensus: 0.4%), figures released by the Federal Office of Statistics showed.

However, Barclays had this to say:"We expect a rebound in 2016 due to the strong factory order numbers in recent months."