▸ Core gov­ern­ment bonds extend gains after soft US labour mar­ket data

▸ Dol­lar advances, climb­ing against both the euro and ster­ling

▸ Wall Street edges higher as investors lean into their bets on Fed rate cuts

Core gov­ern­ment bonds made fur­ther gains glob­ally yes­ter­day after the latest sign of weak­ness in the Amer­ican labour mar­ket gave traders renewed hope of an interest rate cut by the US Fed­eral Reserve later this month.

Data on US private payrolls came in weaker than ana­lysts had expec­ted while job­less claims were higher than fore­cast.

Yields on bench­mark 10-year US Treas­ur­ies fell 3 basis points to 4.18 per cent. The two-year Treas­ury yield, which tends to move with interest rate expect­a­tions, fell 2bp to 3.60 per cent as investors bought the debt.

The private payrolls fig­ure was the latest in a series of soft employ­ment data ahead of key US non-farm payrolls data today.

A weak non-farm payrolls read­ing for July caused a stock mar­ket sell-off last month and — with mar­kets over­whelm­ingly expect­ing an interest rate cut this month — any unex­pec­ted strength in the jobs data could lead traders to trim their bets.

Sub­stan­tial weak­ness in the jobs num­bers, however, could add to con­cerns over eco­nomic growth.