Tradeweb: Talk of bad Treasury trade on system "false"

U.S. government bond prices dropped suddenly in early trading, which led to speculation of an erroneous trade on the Tradeweb system.

"Reports of a multibillion dollar customer trade error on Tradeweb this morning are completely false. Indeed, Tradeweb has a number of safeguards and warnings incorporated into its electronic markets to prevent 'fat-finger' errors of this type," the company said in a statement.

Tradeweb is a unit of Thomson Reuters.

At the height of the market sell-off, 30-year Treasury bond was down as much as 1-6/32 with a yield of 4.61 percent, which was within striking distance of a near eight-month high set in December.

Traders said the trade was as much as $6 billion.

The surprisingly large size of the long-dated bonds sold raised chatter that the trade was a clerical error, and analysts said it was intended to be significantly smaller.

"There were a lot of rumors ... There may have been a big error trade," said Thomas Roth, executive director in U.S. government trading at Mitsubishi UFJ Securities in New York.

The long bond last traded 19/32 lower in price for a yield of 4.57 percent.

(Reporting by Richard Leong; Editing by Dan Grebler)