Federal agencies find no single reason for period of extreme bond market volatility last year

The Treasury Department and other government agencies are unable to pinpoint a single reason for a period of extreme volatility that occurred in the market for Treasury securities on Oct. 15 last year.

Agencies including Treasury and the Federal Reserve issued a joint report saying that a variety of factors, such as record trading volumes, may have contributed to the volatility. Yields on 10-year Treasury bonds gyrated wildly for a brief period during the day.

Republicans have charged that the incident could be linked to the massive overhaul of financial markets that Congress approved in 2010 to try to prevent a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis. But officials say they found no evidence that regulatory changes from the Dodd-Frank Act were a factor in the Oct. 15 volatility.