An anonymous account on X (formerly Twitter) caused wild rises and falls in stock markets after it published fake news that the US President Donald Trump was considering suspending tariffs for 90 days.
The Financial Times (FT) writes about this.
On the afternoon of April 7, the media spread the news that the director of the US National Economic Council Kevin Gasset allegedly said that Trump was considering a 90-day pause in the introduction of tariffs. The hosts of the American television channel CNBC read this headline live, trying to explain why the market suddenly started to rise.
The S&P 500 rose nearly 6% after the headline appeared. But within an hour, the White House denied the report — there was no plan to suspend tariffs. Stocks fell by nearly the same amount.
It was not easy to understand where the information about Gassetʼs alleged words came from. The probable source is a user with the username @DeItaone in X, who uses the name *Walter Bloomberg. He has no connection with the American agency Bloomberg
At 10:13 a.m.
Some have suggested that the misinformation may have stemmed from an inaccurate transcript of a Fox News interview with Kevin Gassett, in which he said only, “The President [Trump] will decide what he sees fit.” This was no confirmation of any tariff pause, and the interview came almost 2 hours before Walter Bloomberg’s fake post.
An account called Hammer Capital published the same post at 10:11 a.m. — that is, earlier than the Walter Bloomberg account, CNBC, or any other source that Financial Times reporters were able to find.
Many financial news feeds have expensive subscriptions, so some traders turn to social media aggregators like @DeItaone. This shows how vulnerable the market is to information leaks—so much so that even an anonymous post can cause a 6 percent market swing.
Furthermore, the market reacts not only to facts, but also to expectations. As one analyst jokingly summed up:
"We went up 8% because of a fake headline, crashed when we realized it was fake, and then went up again when we thought: if we react so much to fake news, imagine how we would react to real news."
What preceded
On April 2, the US President Donald Trump reported that he would impose tariffs on goods from other countries. The new tariffs will apply to more than 180 countries and territories (not including Russia, North Korea, Cuba and Belarus, which are already under sanctions). A 10% tariff was imposed on Ukraine. The European Union was hit with a 20% tariff.
The US tariffs have shaken global stock markets: the largest stock indexes in Asia and Europe have collapsed, oil prices and cryptocurrency rates have fallen. The US stock index S&P 500 also opened with a decline.
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