‘This Is Madness’: The 15 Minutes That Rocked Stock Markets
This article is for subscribers only.
At just after 10 a.m., shouting erupted on the Siebert trading floor in downtown Manhattan. Mark Malek, the firm’s chief investment officer, rushed out of his office to hear his head trader screaming that President Donald Trump was weighing suspending the across-the-board tariff roll-out that had been sinking stock markets for days.
Malek didn’t believe it. “I call BS,” he blurted out. But seconds later, he watched in astonishment as stocks soared wildly, erasing all of that early morning’s loss in the S&P 500, and climbing as much as 3.4%. “The market is very sensitive,” Malek said. “Tenterhooks is an understatement.”