Understanding gilts: a guide to UK government bonds
What a gilt actually is — a loan to HM Treasury that pays interest and returns your £100 nominal at maturity — and how conventional and index-linked gilts differ.
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Guides to gilts and to using GiltIQ, written against the site's own data and pages.
New to GiltIQ, or stuck on a page? Start with the comprehensive Help — one walkthrough of everything the site does, from the market pages to the trade ledger and the reports.
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Reconciling NPV with the dirty price
A gilt's NPV column discounts each future payment at the gilt's own gross redemption yield, which is why the column adds up to the dirty price per £100 nominal — and why the two curve columns do not.
The ladder in two modes: income target and lump sum
One calculator, two ways in: what the ladder page solves for in each mode, what its five fields do, and what the allocation table and the two cash-flow charts show.
Exporting the income calendar
The coupon calendar lists every payment falling due across the gilts in issue; the export writes exactly the window, filters, holding and tax band on screen.
Adding a holding: recording a trade
A holding comes from trades: what the Record a trade form asks for, how the dirty price is derived, the two CSV shapes an import accepts, and how to undo one.
Opening the curve: reading a gilt against the fitted line
The yield curve plots every priced conventional gilt and fits a line through them; reading one gilt against that line is the question the page exists to answer.
Explain mode
One control in the header turns every annotated column header's glossary sentence into text on the page, and the setting is remembered in the browser rather than on your account.
Reading the list: controls, sort and the watchlist
The page head, the toolbar and the sort controls around the gilt table: what each one changes, and where the net-yield column's tax band comes from.
Finding a gilt: the search palette and a filtered list
Two ways to narrow a hundred gilts down to the one you want: the keyboard palette that jumps straight to a page, and a list's own search box and filters.
The gilt table: one row, column by column
Every column on a row of the conventional and index-linked gilt lists, in the order the list shows them, and the figure each one carries.
Getting an explanation: hover, explain mode and the glossary
Three ways to find out what a header on a GiltIQ table means — hover it, turn explain mode on, or open the glossary page — and all three read from the one table of terms.
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Reading implied RPI across the index-linked gilts
Each index-linked gilt carries its own implied RPI, and the report for 9 June 2026 shows how far those figures sit apart — a shortest-dated breakeven well above the longest — without any claim that an inflation release happened that day.
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Savings rates and gilt yields: a comparison on stated assumptions
A gilt's gross yield to maturity and a savings rate both answer "what does this pay?", but they pay in different ways and the comparison only means anything when every assumption is stated — so the deposit rate here is illustrative rather than a real product.