No flash crash: Paulson, Pimco and the US Treasury meltdown

Market’s big beasts played a part in wild and weird October 15 volatility

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Financial markets witnessed one of the biggest, weirdest moves in their history on October 15 – the intraday collapse and rebound of US Treasury yields – prompting an immediate inquest. In the days that followed, regulators on both sides of the Atlantic quizzed banks, hedge funds and other big trading firms about the causes. What they heard surprised them.

The early explanation was that big hedge funds had been crowding into the same, loss-making trades –