▸ Core gov­ern­ment bonds sell off as investors eye mon­et­ary policy clues

▸ Wall Street extends declines after Wal­mart warn­ing on Trump’s tar­iffs

▸ European stocks lack dir­ec­tion although Paris index under­per­forms

Core gov­ern­ment bonds sold off yes­ter­day as investors focused on the annual cent­ral bankers' meet­ing at Jack­son Hole for clues about the future path of mon­et­ary policy.

A gauge of US eco­nomic activ­ity in both the ser­vices and man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tors was stronger than ana­lysts had expec­ted.

The closely watched S&P pur­chas­ing man­agers' index showed a read­ing of 53.3 for the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor, well above the 49.5 pro­jec­ted, while the ser­vices sec­tor read­ing of 55.4 also beat the expect­a­tion of 54.2. A read­ing over 50 indic­ates expan­sion.

Gold­man Sachs ana­lysts said they had increased their pro­jec­tion for thirdquarter US GDP growth after the PMI data, rais­ing it by 0.1 per­cent­age points to 1.5 per cent annu­al­ised growth.

Yields on bench­mark 10-year Treas­ur­ies rose 5 basis points to 4.35 per cent after the data as investors bet that the US Fed­eral Reserve might be more likely to hold interest rates steady.