Bond yields mostly unchanged

By Wealth Trust Securities

The secondary bond market yields closed broadly unchanged yesterday subsequent to fluctuating within a narrow range. The yields were seen increasing in morning hours of trading mainly on the two 2024 (i.e.15.06.24 & 15.09.24) maturities to intraday highs of 9.90% each against its previous day’s closing levels of 9.80/85 and 9.82/85. However, buying interest during the latter part of the day saw yield decreasing once again to intraday lows of 9.81% and 9.82% respectively, to close the day mostly unchanged against its previous days closings. In addition the maturities of 01.10.22, two 2023’s (i.e.15.03.23 & 15.12.23), two 2024’s (i.e. 01.01.24 & 01.08.24), 01.08.26 and 15.09.34 were seen changing hands at levels of 9.03%, 9.40% to 9.47%, 9.60%, 9.92%, 9.90%, 10.10% to 10.12% and 10.30% to 10.35% respectively as well.

In the secondary bill market, volumes on the 20 November 2020 Treasury bill traded at 8.25%.

The total secondary market Treasury bond transacted volume for 4 December was Rs. 11.91 billion.

In money markets, the Open Market Operations (OMO) Department of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka was seen injecting an amount of Rs. 20.00 billion on an overnight basis by way of a Reverse Repo auction at a weighted average yield of 7.52% as the net overnight liquidity in the system decreased to a surplus of Rs. 13.07 billion yesterday. It further injected an amount of Rs. 0.52 billion for Standalone Primary Dealers by way of an overnight reverse repo auction at a weighted average rate of 7.55% while an amount of Rs. 1.48 billion was injected by way of outright auctions to purchase Treasury bonds for durations of 451 days at a weighted average rate 8.47%, valued today. The overnight call money and repo rates averaged 7.52% and 7.57% respectively.

Rupee loses marginally

The rupee rate on spot contracts was seen depreciating marginally yesterday to close the day at Rs. 181.40/60 against its previous day’s closing levels of Rs. 181.30/40 on the back of buying interest by banks.

The total USD/LKR traded volume for 4 December was $ 54.93 million.

Some of the forward USD/LKR rates that prevailed in the market were: 1 month - 181.80/10; 3 months - 182.70/10 and 6 months - 184.60/10.