Just to put an already-huge year-end move in Portuguese bond yields into some wider context... Here's a chart (via Reuters) of the five-year yield since August 2010 - to which levels it's now, roughly, returned. On the other hand, while the spread of Italian bonds to Bunds is less than 200bps for the first time in a long time, as of this week... it's still almost 200bps versus the pre-crisis norm of handfuls of basis points. Still, note that Wednesday has been a great day for peripheral banking stocks. Unsurprisingly, Portuguese banks joined them (Banco Espirito Santo and Banco Comercial Português were both up 2.5 per cent at pixel time). Related link: The intrinsic (intractable?) bank bid for sovereign debt - FT Alphaville