The false media message, that President Donald Trump is considering suspending the introduction of duties for 90 days, caused chaos to Wall Street. Before the White House denied the false narrative, the S&PC has grown a few percent from the daily minimum. Recognized information agencies and industry media admit the error, but the problem of unverified information that affects the stock exchange comes back from time to time.
Trade in stock markets on Monday, April 7, went down in history as one of the most crazy days in the history of world stock exchanges. At the WSE, there was even a suspension of quotations for an hour, which happened for the first time since 2019. Emotionally loose investors, after a few days of the largest inheritance in years, they began to wait for even substitutes for good information.
Such, as it turned out later, appeared about 40 minutes from the start of the session in New York. It concerned the alleged statement of Kevin Hassett, one of the older advisers of Donald Trump, that the president is to consider 9-day erection of duties to all countries except China. A post with such information on Platform X has posted, among others An account called Walter Bloomberg (nothing to do with the Bloomberg agency), which is followed by about 850 thousand. users.
“Hassett: Trump is considering a 90-day break in tariffs for all countries, except for China”-was a note that reached investors.
According to the analysis of the “Financial Times”, the post from this range of the account appeared at 10.13 East American time, i.e. 16.13 of Warsaw. However, as the journal reports, two minutes earlier
(16.11) This information was provided by another account with a much smaller range called Hammer Capital.
Both Walter Bloomberg and Hammer Capital account regularly publish headers regarding daily events from the world of finance, which in most cases are reproduced information from press agencies. Let's return, however, for a moment this is the events of the Monday stock market.
Why is the S&PC?
On that day, S&PC after opening cash trade (at 15.30), around 3pm he set a daily minimum at 4,847.15 points. However, he began to gain quickly from that moment so that investors began to look for the reasons for this uprising. At 16.10 S&PC was already around 5029 points, i.e. less than 1 percent. lower from Friday's closure, but already over 3.7 percent. higher than the daily minimum.
Even before 16.15 the most important stock index of the world has even came out a plus, which has not been seen on Wall Street for several days. There was a kind of euphoria, and the live program host in the CNBC studio, searching the network in search of an explanation, hit and showed a unlucky headline with Hassett's alleged statement. In addition, one of the presenters read the post during the report. The information went into the world from one of the world's largest business television without verifying its credibility.
Things then went quickly. At this time, S&PC was already at the level of 5159 points, which meant that over 1.6 percent gained over the Friday closing. At 16.20, information, citing CNBC, said Reuters. A moment later, the White House denied the revelations given that President Trump was considering a 90-day delay in duties. The stock markets have gone back.
No author of the unlucky header
So did the upward movement of equity indexes related to accounts such as Walter Bloomberg or Hammer Capital? It seems not, because the chronology of events shows that the S&PC dynamically did not make up for the losses before these accounts gave anything with a 90-day tariff delay. The Hammer Capital account posted a post on X, in which it wrote that “brokerage offices began to send this headline at 10:09 (16.09 in Poland – editor's footnote)”.
The “Financial Times” is delimiting the topic. The main question is where the accounts, which usually only the agency messages give up the headlines of the agency, took this information? “It seems that some experimental program for the editorial office of the headers (or subscription at a low price) published an incorrect title, which was then intercepted by Walter Bloomberg's account,” the daily wonders.
One of the screenshots circulating on the web shows something that looked like a note from Goldman Sachs with a false header. However, according to NBC News, the bank spokesman said that he searched emails and did not find any evidence of the authenticity of such a message.
It was also noticed that the headline could be an imprecise summary of the interview given by Hassett at Fox News on Monday morning. He was asked if the White House would consider appearing suggestions about 90-day duties shifts?. Hasset answered “yes”, then added: “I think the president will decide what he would decide.”
However, for viewers of the interview, and not just reading the relationship, it was obvious the lack of confirmation of the reports he was asked about. This translation did not explain, however, where the thread about the exception for China came from the false header. “FT” sums up that it could be a misinterpretation of the author of the title or simply the effect of the work of a language model.
REUTERS spokesman wrote that the agency “withdrew the incorrect report and regrets his mistake.” In turn, CNBC admitted, describing the situation that unconfirmed information on the belt was broadcast. “Our reporters quickly corrected on the air” – added the station spokesman in response to the request for comment “FT”.
This is not the first time on the stock exchanges
As NBC News notes, although it is still unclear who, who was the first to see about delay of duties, shows how sensitive the markets are in recent days after Trump announced new import tariffs and breakdown on the stock exchanges. This is also not the first time that unverified information affects financial markets. Let us remind you only the fake message described on Bankier.pl, which raised the Actions of the INTERORK by 150 percent, after which 4 days later the company's bankruptcy came. In turn, in 2023 we had sudden decades of decades on American stock indexes after publication of photos suggesting a fire next to the pentagon, which later turned out to be false.
The Polish yard can be mentioned, for example, the GetBack case, which informed about conducting talks with PKO BP and the Polish Development Fund on financial support, which was later denied by the bank and the fund. Recently, in turn, it was loud on the market about EC Będzin, which reported that she concluded a Synthos Green Energy agreement with confidentiality (NDA) regarding the implementation of small modular reactors, every day Orlen denied the company Orlen.
Michał Kubicki
