Elon Musk’s X platform rewards one thing and one thing only — engagement. The more one posts, the more one gets paid. On Monday, one of those X users known for posting headlines from members of the press took it a step too far, claiming that the president was open to suspending his tariffs. Stocks soared upon the news, only to fall again after the White House’s denial. 

The screwup can be traced to the moments before markets opened this morning, when the director of the National Economic Council, Kevin Hassett, was asked on Fox News if the president was considering a 90-day suspension of his tariffs. “I think that the president is going to decide what the president is going to decide,” Mr. Hassett responded. 

Less than two hours later, an X user using the handle Walter Bloomberg posted that the Trump administration was, in fact, considering a 90-day pause on all tariffs except for the ones placed on Communist China. 

The original, incorrect post went up at 10:13 in the morning to the user’s more than 800,000 followers. Three minutes later, it was picked up by another account, @unusual_whales, which then parroted the false news to more than 2 million followers. 

About ten minutes after that post was sent, it was repeated by a reporter live on CNBC. Journalists at the network prefaced their report with the stipulation that they could not confirm it themselves.  

At 10:39 a.m., the White House put out a statement responding to the @unusual_whales post. “Wrong. Fake News,” the White House rapid response team wrote. 

In the 25 minutes between the Walter Bloomberg account’s original post, major indices shot up, likely based on the news first propagated by X users. The current algorithm of X under Mr. Musk’s ownership disincentivizes users from posting outside links to journalist’s work because Mr. Musk himself wants the platform to serve as a press outlet, though naturally confusion can arise when news aggregator accounts don’t link to any original reporting. 

Between 9:45 and 10:30 in the morning, the S&P 500 increased by 6.4 percent, putting the index briefly back in the green for the day. After the White House denied the reports by X users, it fell by more than 200 points. The fluctuation means the index increased in value by about $2.2 trillion before dropping back down to where it was before the erroneous report.

The movement in the Dow Jones Industrial Average was even more dramatic. Between 10:10 AM and 10:20 AM — a mere ten minutes — the index increased by nearly 1,500 points.

Journalist Jason Paladino was quick to point out after the erroneous X post that the account tied to the Walter Bloomberg handle had been previously subject to a complaint at the Securities and Exchange Commission. 

In 2021, someone filed a complaint against “Walter Bloomberg” for a post he made on X about an SEC investigation into an electric vehicle manufacturer, Workhorse Group. Next to the news headline — which included no context about what the investigation was related to — was the ticker for a different electric auto company, Lordstown Motors. 

The person who filed the complaint against the account said the person behind it refused to take down the post or fix the inaccuracies. He allegedly even went so far as to block people who pointed out the error. 

“When people start to reply to his post and asked him to rectify the post, he/she started to block everyone’s access and refuse to rectify this fake news post,” the complaint stated. “He/she also faked his name to include the word ‘Bloomberg’ to deceive readers that he is somewhat related to Bloomberg L.P.”

“I feel that his purpose is to help / participate in a stock manipulation campaign,” the person who filed the complaint said.