Eurozone yields rallied today amid increasing speculation that the European Central Bank will further increase its intervention rate at tomorrow's monthly monetary policy meeting.

The benchmark 10-year Eurozone yield surpassed the 3.3 per cent level forcing the Rizzo Farrugia MGS Index to decline by 0.2 per cent to 973.235 points, representing a 1.95% drop since the start of the year. The largest decline was registered in the 5.25% MGS 2030 (I) (-33 basis points) which was priced by the Central Bank of Malta Stockbroker at 101.62 per cent.

Tomorrow afternoon, the Treasury will be announcing the prices of next week's new MGS offering.

On the local equity market, the MSE Share Index retreated by another 0.2 per cent to 3,350.675 points mainly due to the 0.4 per cent decline in the share price of Bank of Valletta plc to the €2.88 level.

GO plc also closed in negative territory with a 0.7 per cent drop back to the €1.33 level across 17 trades totalling 38,650 shares.

Fresh sell orders also pushed FIMBank plc's share price down 0.6 per cent lower to a new 68-month low of US$0.86,5 on a single trade of 1,675 shares.

A single trade of 7,377 Simonds Farsons Cisk plc shares was transacted at the €1.80 level, representing a 2.2 per cent decline from the previous close.

Low volumes were also registered in MaltaPost plc with the share price edging 0.8 per cent lower to close at the €1.08 level.

Meanwhile, HSBC Bank Malta plc closed unchanged at the €3 level across eight trades totalling 18,500 shares.

Similarly, Middlesea Insurance plc held on to the €0.95 level on volumes of just under 1,400 shares.

The other active equity, RS2 Software plc, also ended today's session unchanged as a further 44,900 shares traded at the €0.50 level.

The equity will trade ex-dividend as from May 11.

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