With this, we are signing off for the day. Thank you for all your great comments. We’ll be back at the crack of dawn tomorrow.

Meanwhile, Britain’s biggest wine retailer is to increase pay for its store managers in an attempt to prevent one in four of them leaving the business each year.

Majestic Wine is introducing new share incentive plans and overhauling cash bonuses for its 213 store managers, who typically earn a £30,000 salary – up from £28,000 in November – plus an annual bonus.

A cap limiting bonuses to £1,000 was scrapped in November – a first step to reduce the high staff turnover. You can read the full story here.

Ryanair is to take on Airbnb – by launching the Ryanair Rooms service in October, offering everything from 5-star hotel rooms to hostels and spare rooms in private homes.

It will add at least two partners to Booking.com, currently its exclusive accommodation partner, Reuters reported.

Chief marketing officer Kenny Jacobs said:

We see this as a natural progression towards Ryanair.com becoming the Amazon of air travel.

Catching up on corporate news… Argos has reported its strongest sales performance in two years as it prepares for its sale to Sainsbury’s, but also revealed it had set aside £30m to compensate store card customers who were charged “excess fees” on late payments.

It’s not a massive amount of money – at most “double-digit pounds” per customer.

But it’s a bit embarrassing, just before the sale of the business to Sainsbury’s which is expected to go through in the autumn.

George Salmon, equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, said:

Given the pending takeover, the board of Sainsbury’s will probably be shaking their heads at the news, though in the grander scheme of things the sum involved is not enough to derail the deal.

On a brighter note, 4K televisions, computers and tablets sold well in the first quarter; washing machines and gardening equipment didn’t. You can read the full story here.

Laith Khalaf, senior analyst, Hargreaves Lansdown, has a take on the drop in 10-year UK bond yields to a record low.

While all eyes have been on the EU referendum campaign, gilt yields have been slipping, fast.

The US Federal Reserve is backing away from interest rate rises following wavering employment data, and in Europe the central bank is pumping billions of euros into the bond market every month in the form of quantitative easing, both of which have served to drive yields down.

The low yield on government bonds paints a pretty pessimistic picture of the global economy, and suggests we are set for an extended period of low or negative inflation, and weak economic performance.

The question though is whether one can really trust an indicator which has been so heavily distorted by central bank stimulus measures.

Back at the Brussels Economic Forum, European Commissioner Pierre Moscovici and Greek finance minister Euclid Tsakalotos have both identified Brexit as a potential crisis facing Europe.

Moscovici:

A year ago we were talking about Grexit, now we are talking about positive integration.

There are several crises around... Brexit, hopefully it will be remain but we await that...

The jobless claims will be a relief to those investors concerned by last week’s shockingly weak payroll numbers.

The non-farm payrolls showed just 38,000 jobs were added in the US in in May, compared with expectations of a 164,000 increase. It was the slowest rate of growth since September 2010.

US markets are expected to open lower, as bond markets rally:

Investors are selling shares and buying bonds, considered to be less risky assets at times of heightened uncertainty.

Benchmark 10-year German bund yields have hit record lows, while Germany’s DAX is the biggest faller among the major European equity markets.

Draghi’s rather gloomy comments earlier - when he appeared frustrated at the lack of progress on structural reforms by eurozone countries - is also weighing on investor sentiment.

• FTSE 100: -0.9% at 6,247

• Germany’s DAX: -1.3% at 10,084

• France’s CAC: -0.9% at 4,408

• Spain’s IBEX: -0.2% at 8,810

• Italy’s FTSE MIB: -0.7% at 17,777

Pierre Moscovici, European Commissioner for economic and financial affairs, is speaking at the Brussels Economic Forum.

He says that while he understands structural reforms have negative connotations in some countries and can be politically difficult to push through, “we need to stand firm”.

The way to tackle long-term unemployment and reduce social exclusion is through structural reforms, he says.

Output growth will increasingly depend on our ability to improve productivity growth and investment.

The key to this is investment in “human capital” he says, partly through education and training.

I want reform to mean progress.

Rolls-Royce is one of the FTSE 100’s biggest fallers, down 3.4% at 590.5p.

The chief executive of the aircraft engine maker has apparently written to staff warning them that the company is falling behind on deliveries.

Warren East urged his colleagues to work hard to ensure profit targets for this year are met, the FT reports.

He wrote:

[The] business remains in reasonable shape with opportunities and issues broadly balanced.

Delivery issues mean there is a lot to do in the second half and hence a higher risk.

East acknowledged times were tough for staff at Rolls-Royce, which issued issued a string of profit warnings and cut jobs. He told staff:

Right now I do know that in many parts of the organisation that discomfort is very real indeed … For many at the moment ‘transformation’ is simply unpleasant.

I appreciate that this is a difficult environment, difficult enough just to do the job, without people like me preaching about ‘pace’.

If we really want to be the Rolls-Royce of our industry we must push through overdue changes we all know we have to make.

Catching up on some corporate news, Amazon begins fresh food deliveries in parts of London today.

Taking on Britain’s supermarkets, Amazon Fresh will offer more than 130,000 groceries to homes in north and east London, including thousands of fresh produce, dairy and bakery items that the company has not previously sold in the UK.

The service is available to Amazon Prime customers, who pay a subscription in return for fast delivery of goods.

Ajay Kavan, vice-president of Amazon Fresh, said the key to the success of the service would be a combination of low prices, vast selection and fast delivery.

The Guardian’s Sarah Butler has the full story here.

We’ve got more reaction to those better-than-expected UK trade figures.

Not everyone is convinced that trade will make a positive contribution to GDP in the second quarter.

David Kern, British Chambers of Commerce:

While the fall in the trade deficit is welcome, it still remains unacceptably large and is likely to be a drag on UK growth in Q2.

April’s figures also highlight the need for the government to do more to support exporters, including improved access to finance for companies looking to break into new fast-growing economies.

Martin Beck, EY ITEM Club:

While export volumes were up 4.3% in the three months to April compared with the previous three months, import volumes were up by 4.6% over the same period. So as things stand net trade is likely to exert a drag on GDP growth in Q2, unless April’s apparent export strength is sustained.

The chances of this happening would appear to be relatively low. Global growth remains pretty subdued and sterling has regained a good chunk of its losses from earlier in the year, so the backdrop for exporters remains very challenging.

Turning to other events, there has been more reaction to Wednesday’s shock sessions on BHS, where MP’s quizzed key members of the BHS team about the collapse of the high street retailer.

Among other things, the former owner of BHS, Dominic Chappell, was accused of threatening to kill the retailer’s chief executive, Darren Topp.

When asked by BBC Radio 4’s Today programme whether he was surprised by the testimony, Oliver Parry, head of corporate governance at the Institute of Directors got it spot on:

“Absolutely. Who needs Agatha Christie when you have Mr Chappell and the BHS management team yesterday.”

Exports grew more than imports in April, triggering a surprise fall in the trade in goods deficit.

The news should be a boost to George Osborne, who has long argued that the UK economy would do better to be more reliant on manufacturing and exports, and less reliant on debt-fuelled spending.

Back in 2012, the chancellor boldly set a target of doubling UK exports to £1 trillion . The target is looking increasingly out of reach, but the broader ambition remains.

You might therefore expect that Osborne would jump on these positive trade numbers, as a sign that his Long-Term Economic Plan is Working. But so far nothing.

The Treasury says it is a matter for the Business department. But that doesn’t explain the chancellor’s silence on Wednesday, when official figures took everyone by surprise showing that industrial production grew at the fastest rate in almost four years in April.

Larry Elliott, the Guardian’s economics editor, has a theory about why Osborne remains tight-lipped. [Quick clue: EU referendum.]

In Larry’s words:

In normal times, George Osborne would have been all over the good news from the manufacturing sector like a rash. The figures from UK industry were better – a lot better – than the City had been expecting and showed the fastest month-on-month increase in almost four years.

So where was the instant statement from the chancellor praising the strength of the economy and the success of the government’s strategy? Sherlock Holmes would have had the answer. Osborne’s unusual reticence was a classic case of the dog that doesn’t bark.

Put simply, good economic news doesn’t really suit the chancellor at the present juncture. His narrative is that the risk of Britain leaving the European Union has left the economy trembling on the edge of the precipice and for that story to stick he needs signs that consumers and businesses are taking fright at the risk of Brexit.

Unfortunately for Osborne, the recent data is not at all helpful. Better weather brought consumers out in their droves in May, according to the British Retail Consortium. Now the Office for National Statistics has reported that industrial production was up by 2% between March and April at a time when the markets had expected output to be flat.

Howard Archer, chief UK economist at IHS Global Insight, says the figures suggest trade could make a positive contribution to gross domestic product in the second quarter, after being a drag for a prolonged period.

April’s data suggests that net trade could actually make a positive contribution to UK GDP growth in the second quarter, having been a significant drag in the first quarter of 2016 and through the second half of 2015.

It lifts hopes that UK exporters will increasingly be helped by the overall marked weakening of the pound over the coming months.

UK exporters will also be hoping that eurozone activity can hold up after an improved 0.6% quarter-on-quarter GDP expansion in the first quarter. However, the global growth outlook is still pretty uncertain, with the UK referendum on EU membership reinforcing this.

More on those trade figures, which were better than expected and showed a surprise fall in the deficit.

Goods exports volumes increased by 11.2% - the biggest monthly rise since records began in 1998. At £26.1bn, the total value of goods exported in April was not far off the record high set in June 2013.

Exports of British-made goods to the EU rose by £900m in April, while exports of goods to countries outside the EU increased by £1.3bn to a record £14bn.

Andrew Sentance, former policymaker at the Bank of England, considered the annual numbers:

Draghi is talking about employment trends in the eurozone and warns unfavourable demographic trends will create challenges.

Employment growth [is likely] to decelerate in the not-too-distant future because of the fall in the working age population.

Even migration is unlikely to fully offset this natural population decline.

He says there is room for productivity improvement in all countries, and that the challenge is first to raise productivity in firms and then get capital to those firms so that can grow. That would boost the eurozone economy, and jobs, the central bank says.

Draghi finishes will a warning that eurozone leaders must press ahead with structural reforms “without undue delay”, or risk lasting economic damage. The cost of delaying reforms, he says, is too high, because it creates damaging uncertainty and holds back investment.

There are many political reasons to delay structural reforms, but very few economic ones.

And the cost of delay is too high.

Brent crude oil prices have been steadily rising since the beginning of the year...