Portugal is unlikely to issue debt before early next year, but the country is hoping to regain full market access by mid-2014.
Of interest to those considering a stake in PGAL is that government’s 2014 budget includes wage and pension reductions for public workers, important points when seeing that PGAL allocates nearly 23% of its weight to consumer services stocks.
Portuguese 10-year sovereign bonds closed at yield of 5.91% on Wednesday, down from the September peak of 7.42%, according to Bloomberg data. Those bonds yielded over 8.8% a year ago, but Wednesday’s close is still about 70 basis points higher than the May trough.
PGAL Sector Weights