Moody’s verdict did not “touch” the bond market.

Two sessions after the international rating agency’s decision not to upgrade the country’s credit rating while keeping its outlook unchanged, the secondary bond market does not appear to have been affected.

It is indicative that the margin of the Greek 10-year bonds, compared to the corresponding German ones, remains consistently below the 1% limit.

In the meantime, next Wednesday the Ministry of Finance is going to proceed with the auction of six-month interest-bearing promissory notes, where according to convergent market estimates, their interest rate is expected to be at lower levels, around 3.80%, than the previous auction (3.83 %) of February.

However, both the domestic bond market and in general the larger markets of the Eurozone seem to have discounted, despite the effort made by some ECB officials to moderate expectations, that the Central Bank will proceed by the end of the year with three to four rate reductions of interest rates.

Tellingly, ECB President Christine Lagarde sent a clear message today, pointing out that the ECB cannot commit to a specific number of rate cuts even after it begins to reduce borrowing costs.

As he characteristically stated at a conference in Frankfurt, “our decisions should remain dependent on the data and be taken at each board meeting in response to new information as it comes in” adding that “this implies that, even after the first interest rate cut, we cannot commit in advance to a specific course of interest rates.”

In the secondary bond market today, and more specifically in the Electronic Transaction System (HDAT) of the Bank of Greece, transactions of 51 million euros were recorded, of which 42 million euros related to purchase orders.

The yield on the Greek 10-year bond increased marginally to 3.42% from 3.41% that closed yesterday, against 2.43% of the corresponding German bond, resulting in a spread of 0.99%

In the foreign exchange market, the euro is moving higher against the dollar, discounting the Fed’s decision to keep interest rates unchanged, with the result that the European currency is trading at $1.0852 in the afternoon from the level of $1.0837 that opened the market .