How an Errant Headline Caused Markets to Surge

Markets see-sawed wildly Monday before ultimately ending slightly lower, thanks in part to what the Trump administration referred to as "fake news" regarding tariffs. What happened, per CNN and NBC News:

• At around 8:30am Eastern time, Fox News interviewed National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett, who was asked whether President Trump would "consider a 90-day pause in tariffs." Hassett replied, in part: "The president is (going to) decide what the president is (going to) decide."
• At 10:11am Eastern time, a finance-focused X account with fewer than 1,000 followers—Hammer Capital, or @yourfavorito—claimed that Hassett said Trump was considering a 90-day pause. That appears to be the first time the claim, which was false, was made on the social media platform.

• Within minutes, several other finance-focused accounts, including some with much larger followings, repeated the false claim. Also within minutes, stock indices abruptly surged. As NBC explains, many investors utilize "algorithmic software that can parse information for buy or sell signals," and that software likely picked up on the false claim.
• At 10:15am, trying to figure out what was causing the surge, CNBC anchors read the incorrect information on-air, showed it on the screen, and ran a banner reading "HASSETT: TRUMP IS CONSIDERING A 90-DAY PAUSE IN TARIFFS FOR ALL COUNTRIES [EXCEPT] CHINA," despite the fact that at least one anchor made it clear the information had not been confirmed.

• At 10:19am, Reuters had picked up on the false claim, citing CNBC.
• The White House quickly made it clear no pause was being considered, and both CNBC and Reuters corrected their information. Markets dropped again in response.
• Some of the finance-focused accounts deleted their original social media posts; others claimed they were simply re-posting information they saw on CNBC or Reuters.
• As for @yourfavorito, the account posted Monday afternoon, "To be as abundantly clear as possible, trading desks started sending out this headline at 10:09. I was regurgitating what the market was reacting to, to my 600 followers. It was an incorrect interpretation of a Fox News interview."

(More stock market stories.)