Stock market loses momentum after latest Trump bombshells

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

(Image credit: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

published 19 May 2017

The stock market suffered a setback in its gains after two more bombshell reports on President Trump dropped Friday afternoon. The New York Times reported Trump told Russian officials in an Oval Office meeting that he fired FBI Director James Comey, whom he called a "nut job," to ease the "pressure" of the Russia investigation, and The Washington Post revealed that a White House official has become a "significant person of interest" in the FBI's investigation of Trump-Russia ties; shortly thereafter, the stock market's upward climb reversed course.

Bloomberg described the dives as a "late day fade." "You [have] headline risk, and the market sold off briefly because of those headlines on a slow Friday afternoon," Andrew Frankel, co-president of Stuart Frankel & Co in New York, told Reuters. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, the S&P 500, and the Nasdaq Composite still ended slightly up, though not as high as they were prior to the big news breaks of the day.