The gilt list is a dealing screen in miniature — a clean price, a yield and a change figure for every gilt — and reading the columns in the order a trade needs them turns a wall of numbers into an answer.
One row per gilt
The conventional gilts list shows one row per gilt in issue, each dense with figures. Each row is one gilt carrying the few numbers that decide a purchase: what it costs, what it yields, and how it has moved. The trick is to read the columns in the order a trade needs them, rather than strictly left to right.
A first look can make the columns blur into one another. Taking them in three groups — the price, the yield, and the change — is what keeps the screen readable and stops a price being mistaken for a yield.
The price columns
The clean price is the gilt's own value, before the interest built up since the last coupon. Beside it, accrued interest is the slice of the next coupon the seller has earned, and the two together make the dirty price — the cash you would pay per £100 nominal. On the screen the clean price is the comparison figure and the dirty price is the cash figure; keeping them apart is what stops a cheap-looking price surprising you at checkout.
For an index-linked gilt a further column, the index ratio, scales both the coupon and the redemption, so the dirty price read off the row is already scaled for the rise in prices since issue.
The yield columns
The gross yield is the annualised return if you hold the gilt to maturity, with coupons reinvested at the same rate and compounded once a year. The DMO yield is the same return under the DMO's market convention, with coupons twice a year and counted on actual days. They answer the same question in two conventions, so a reader comparing gilts should compare like with like.
A tax-band control on the list adds a net yield column that applies income tax at the chosen band to the coupons, and the post-tax yield page carries the same after-tax figure across every band. The yield columns are the comparison figures — they let two gilts with different coupons and prices be read on the same basis.
The two yield conventions exist because markets quote yields differently. The gross yield compounds once a year and is the figure most private readers compare; the DMO yield matches how the gilt market itself quotes, so it lines up with the reference data. Neither is more correct than the other; they are two ways of counting.
The change column
The change column, labelled since the previous close, shows how far a gilt's yield has moved since the prior session. A positive figure means the yield rose, which for a fixed-coupon gilt means the price fell; a negative figure means the yield fell and the price rose. It is a measurement of the last session, not a forecast of the next one.
| Column | Answers the question |
| Clean price | What is the gilt itself worth? |
| Accrued interest | How much of the next coupon has the seller earned? |
| Dirty price | What cash would I pay per £100 nominal? |
| Gross yield | What annual return if held to maturity? |
| DMO yield | The same return, on the DMO's convention |
| Change | How far has the yield moved since the previous close? |
From screen to order
A row read this way gives the two facts an order needs: the cash cost, from the dirty price, and the return, from the yield columns. The record-a-trade form takes the clean price and accrued interest straight from the row and works out the dirty price, so what you book matches what you read on the screen.
Reading the row in that order — price, then yield, then change — keeps the three questions separate. A reader who starts from the yield and works back to the price arrives at the same answer, but the cash is easy to lose sight of when the yield is the first number read.
Sorting and filtering the list
The list can be sorted and filtered, and which column a reader sorts by changes the question being asked. Sorting by gross yield orders gilts by return to maturity; sorting by maturity groups them by when the nominal comes back; sorting by the change column ranks the day's moves. None of these orders is a ranking of better and poorer — they are different ways of asking what the list holds.
Filtering narrows the rows to a maturity range or a coupon band, which is how a reader looking at one part of the curve stops the screen from showing everything at once. The figures in each remaining row mean exactly what they meant before; the filter changes which rows appear, not what they say.
The list is a snapshot of a day's report, and it is worth knowing what it leaves out. It does not forecast; the change column records the last session, not the next. It does not account for tax on its own beyond the net-yield column for the chosen band, and it does not carry a dealing cost, which sits with the trade rather than the row.
So the screen answers the comparison and the cash, and stops there. The tax treatment of a holding and the cost of dealing are covered on the pages that carry them, and reading the list with those in mind is what keeps a quoted yield from being mistaken for a net, all-in return.
Background, not advice
This guide explains how to read the columns on the gilt list; it is general background, not investment, tax or legal advice for any reader's circumstances. Prices and yields move, so a row read on one day differs from the next, and the day's market data and the gilt's own record are the primary sources for any figure.