There has been ongoing interest in the yields available on Irish government bonds. Using actual trades Bloomberg calculate an implied 10-year yield. This surged to over 14% in the run up to the Brussels summit on the 21st of July. The yields have fallen on almost everyday since and yesterday finished at 9.5%.
However, little attention has been given to the trading volume on these bonds. Here is a little insight into trading volumes from the start of the year to August 9th.
For most days the trading volume is very low. The average daily trading volume for the year is just 0.28% of the total number of bonds outstanding (c.89.6 billion). For the January 2014 bond the average trading volume in 2010 was six times larger than it has been in 2011. Trading volumes in Irish bonds in 2011 have generally been very low.
There has been an increase in the time since the EU summit when yields also began to fall. The average daily trading volume has been 0.82% since the EU summit. The other occasion when trading volumes increased slightly was the first two weeks in April. This was immediately following the March 31st publication of the bank stress tests and again was a time when bond yields were falling.