Bond trading houses on Wall Street have lost hundreds of millions of dollars in the US government bond market this month, just weeks before the end of their financial year, according to bankers at leading debt houses.

Traders in the $300bn (€342bn) per day US Treasury market were hit by a double whammy when the market had its biggest rally in 14 years and then, two weeks later, the biggest plunge since the 1998 global financial crisis. Many market participants were left on the wrong side of multimillion dollar bets in both cases.