Reuters takes bond trophy

Spain has won the World Cup and Reuters notched up a big Spanish victory of its own last week, beating allcomers with the news — from a well-placed source — that a new 10-year bond issue today had attracted such strong demand that the government ended up selling six billions-worth, a billion euros more than it had planned to. The sting in the tail was the yield, about 150 basis points higher than for the previous 10-year issue. Bloomberg was over 20 minutes behind us with the news. Crucially Reuters was first with a story that has fed a growing market sentiment theme — that the euro zone debt crisis might prove to be manageable after all. The attached graph shows how Spanish yields have dropped since the successful auction on July 6. In a similar vein, Reuters led the pack reporting the following day’s Portuguese T-bill tender, coming in nearly a minute ahead of Bloomberg and a handful of seconds in advance of Dow Jones with the fact that yields had dropped by over a point from the previous equivalent sale.