In Absurd Fiasco, Entire Market Spike Was Due To A CNBC Grammatical Mistake

The farce that is this “market” just took a whole new turn for the surreal.

As we reported earlier, the reason why stocks surged just after 5am EDT is because of a CNBC headline, according to which the US Treasury Secretary said that a US-China trade deal “is” – present tense – 90% complete.

This was quickly propagated by Bloomberg…

  • U.S. TREASURY SECRETARY STEVE MNUCHIN SAYS U.S.-CHINA TRADE DEAL IS 90% COMPLETE

… which triggered a flurry of algo buying.

Doubling down, CNBC also tweeted as much saying in a tweet that:

“Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin says a U.S.-China trade deal is “about 90% of the way there.” https://t.co/3Q0wvJKKxD pic.twitter.com/of6yH5y3rs”

The problem: CNBC made a huge grammatical mistake, because instead of saying “is”, Mnuchin was actually using the past tense, and what he really said – for those who listened to the video – is that “we were about 90% of the way’ on China trade deal.

CNBC also promptly deleted its tweet which said the deal “is” 90% completed, and the current on CNBC headline now says “Mnuchin: ‘We were about 90% of the way’ on China trade deal and there’s a ‘path to complete this.”

The deleted tweet was also revised:

So basically Mnuchin said absolutely nothing new, and not only that, he did not provide any optimism that a deal was coming, but as we said earlier, was merely recapping what was already known.

But what is most absurd about this entire incident is that nobody who was buying futures – and global stocks – actually listened to the Mnuchin clip in which he clearly used the past tense, and a second just as absurd outcome is that after stocks surged at 5am on the patently wrong headline meant to boost optimism in a deal…

… they have yet to drop back to where they were before the Mnuchin fake CNBC news hit.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2X7h2CJ Tyler Durden

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.