‘It’s madness’: US market mysteriously soars

As predicted the US markets sank when they opened on Monday – until they began to soar. It was all down to a single X post – but something was wrong.

It’s been labelled by some as the 15 minutes “of madness”: a wild ride that sent US stock markets soaring upwards on Monday rather than plummeting as many expected.

And it appears to have all come down to a single tweet that was just as quickly deleted.

The fact that one tweet from a small account can send shares soaring shows just how jumpy Wall Street is at the moment in its desperation for positive news.

Since last Wednesday’s tariff announcement by Donald Trump all of the US’ main indices – the Dow Jones Industrial Average, tech heavy Nasdaq and S&P 500 – have sunk.

All three are somewhere around 9 per cent lower in a single week and between 11 and 13 per cent lower than a month ago.

With no trading on the weekend, there were predictions that the stock markets would see a “Black Monday” on the first day of the week perhaps with shares crashing by 20 per cent of more.

Global fretting over the impact of tariffs has seen stock markets elsewhere get perilously close to that. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index was down more than 13 per cent on Monday.

At 9.30am, New York time, the indices duly began shedding investors. Within a few minutes the trio were uniformly down by 3.8 per cent.

And then, just after 10am, they all mysteriously started changing direction. People were buying stocks but for no apparent reason.

Within just a few minutes more than $4 trillion in value was added to the S&P. Then, 15 minutes later, those gains were all shed.

US stocks soared for a brief window overnight. Picture: AFP

One tweet

What on earth was going on?

The crux of the surge appeared to be a Fox News interview with US national economic adviser Kevin Hassett.

An X account had riffed off that interview and posted: “HASSETT: TRUMP IS CONSIDERING A 90-DAY PAUSE IN TARIFFS FOR ALL COUNTRIES EXCEPT CHINA”.

The account was obscure but it soon got retweeted and re-posted.

In these febrile financial times it was enough for people to pile back in hopeful that perhaps this was all just a negotiating tactic by Donald Trump after all.

At one point the indices were in the green, trading at about 1 per cent higher than Friday.

The 90-day pause plan didn’t seem a stretch. One of Mr Trump’s finance world supporters had already proposed it.

A share spike occurred on US indices on Monday.

In a lengthy statement on X on Sunday billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman had urged the US president to delay the tariffs to allow time for negotiation.

“The president has an opportunity to call a 90-day time out, negotiate and resolve unfair asymmetric tariff deals, and induce trillions of dollars of new investment in our country.

“If, on the other hand, on April 9th we launch economic nuclear war on every country in the world, business investment will grind to a halt, consumers will close their wallets and pocket books, and we will severely damage our reputation with the rest of the world that will take years and potentially decades to rehabilitate.”

Bill Ackman, chief executive officer of Pershing Square Capital Management has called for a 90 day tariff pause to give time for negotiation. Picture: Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg.

‘This is madness’

A random X account had said that Mr Trump was about to do exactly that based off an interview with one of his officials.

The problem was, the Trump official didn’t actually say that.

Mr Hassett was indeed asked on Monday by a Fox News host if Mr Trump was considering a 90 day tariff pause.

“I think the president is going to decide what the president is going to decide,” he replied.

“There are more than 50 countries in negotiation with the president.”

The White House then did its own social media post with the clip simply saying the comments attributed to Mr Hassett were “wrong”.

The original X post vanished.

And down the markets sunk once again.

Between around 10.05am and 10.25am, the markets shot up and then down.

“This is madness,” senior floor trader at TradeMas at the New York Stock Exchange Peter Tuchman told business publicationBloomberg.

When traders “realised this headline wasn’t right, everything sold off again. Now everyone is getting their butts kicked,” he added.

US Director of the National Economic Council Kevin Hassett speaks during the daily briefing in the Brady Briefing Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on February 20, 2025. (Photo by Jim WATSON / AFP)

Markets sink, but by less than expected

But there collective butts were not kicked as hard as they might have been.

Shares prices sank but not down to the level of the opening bell. And as the day has gone on it’s not the crash some predicted.

At 3pm, local time, the markets were down by around one percentage point from Friday’s shocker of a day.

And perhaps that’s because while Mr Hassett didn’t confirm a 90 day tariff pause – he also didn’t say it wouldn’t happen either.

There also might be some speculation that Mr Trump, after meeting Israel’s President Benjamin Netanyahu in the White House today, could announce that nation’s 17 per cent tariff will fall. If that happens, the same could happen for other nations too.

Or it could be blind, desperate hope from the markets that Mr Trump’s tariffs somehow won’t be implemented.

Originally published as ‘It’s madness’: US market mysteriously soars