A gilt's yield and its clean price are the same figure read two ways, so the list's two Since the previous close views describe one market movement rather than two separate events.
One movement, two readings
On the conventional gilts list the Change column sits beside the gross yield, and it records how far that yield moved since the previous close. A positive figure means the yield rose. For a gilt with a fixed coupon, a rising yield and a falling clean price are one event: the price is the variable, the yield is what the price implies, and the two cannot move in the same direction. The list makes this visible by grouping the same rows into two Since the previous close views — the gilts whose yield rose, so their price fell, and the gilts whose yield fell, so their price rose.
Those two views are not two different measurements. They are one day's repricing, sorted by which way each gilt went. A reader who looks at both sees the whole priced universe split into the gilts that got cheaper and the gilts that got dearer, with nothing in between left out.
Why the price has to fall
The mechanism is the fixed coupon. A gilt's coupon is set when it is issued and does not change; what the market will pay for that coupon does. If the return available on comparable debt rises, an existing gilt paying an older, lower coupon looks less attractive, so buyers will only take it at a lower price. The lower price is what lifts its yield back to the market's required level. Nothing about the gilt has changed except the price at which it changes hands.
The same argument runs backwards when market yields fall: the fixed coupon becomes worth more, the price rises, and the yield falls until it matches the market again. The direction is forced by the arithmetic rather than by sentiment, which is why it holds for every conventional gilt on every trading day.
| What the market did | Yield | Clean price | Which view it lands in |
| Yields rose | Up | Down | Since the previous close — the gilts got cheaper |
| Yields fell | Down | Up | Since the previous close — the gilts got dearer |
| Nothing moved | Flat | Flat | Neither view |
How far the price moves
The size of the price move depends on the gilt, and the column that measures it is modified duration: roughly, how much the price changes when the yield changes by one percentage point, expressed in years. The figure on the list is on the annually compounded basis, so it shares a basis with the annual gross yield beside it rather than with the semi-annual DMO yield.
An illustration makes the connection concrete. Take a gilt quoted at 95.00 clean with an annual gross yield of 5.00% and a modified duration of 8.0 years, and suppose its yield rises by ten basis points, from 5.00% to 5.10%. A duration of 8.0 implies a price fall of about 8.0 × 0.10%, or 0.80%, which on 95.00 is about 0.76, taking the clean price to roughly 94.24. Every input is stated and the figures are illustrative, not a quote from any gilt; the exact clean price on the list comes from the site's own calculation.
Duration is a first-order estimate, not a prediction. It assumes a small, parallel shift in the yield and ignores the coupon income received along the way, so a large move or a change in the shape of the curve will produce a different figure.
Why one gilt moves more than another
A long-dated gilt has many years of coupons and a distant redemption still to come, so a change in the rate those payments are discounted at acts on a longer stream and moves the price further. A short-dated gilt, close to its redemption, has little left to reprice and moves less. That is why the same shift in market yields can leave two rows a few pounds apart in clean price and many pounds apart in the cash an investor would pay.
- Duration is not a fixed property: it falls as a gilt approaches maturity, so the same gilt becomes less sensitive over time.
- A gilt with a low coupon can carry a longer duration than a higher-coupon gilt of the same maturity, because more of its return arrives at redemption rather than along the way.
- The duration column and the yield change are on different scales — years and basis points — so they are read together rather than compared directly.
A view, not a verdict
The two Since the previous close views describe the last session, nothing more. A gilt that appears in the yield-up-price-down view did not become a worse holding in any settled sense; it became cheaper, which is a fact about the price rather than advice about the gilt. Equally, a gilt whose price rose did not become a better one. The views are a way of reading the day's repricing, and a reader who treats a single session as a trend is reading more into the figure than it carries.
It is also worth checking whether the move was local or market-wide. The gilt yield curve plots every priced gilt against its fitted benchmark, so a repricing that touched the whole curve looks different from one or two gilts moving against it. A gilt in the yield-up-price-down view while the curve barely moved is a local story; the same gilt in a view full of names is the market repricing, and the two are worth telling apart before drawing any conclusion from a row.
The gilts list and the curve page are built from the same daily report, so the change in a row and the movement on the curve describe the same session. Reading them together is what turns a single red or green cell into a picture of what the market did that day.
Background, not advice
This article explains the relationship between a gilt's yield and its price; it is general background, not investment, tax or legal advice for any reader's circumstances. A price that has fallen is only a realised loss if the gilt is sold, because the amount repaid at maturity is the nominal value rather than the price paid. The daily report and the gilt's own record are the primary sources for a real price, yield or change.