At 10:08 a.m. on April 7, 2025, U.S. stocks were deep in the red. Then what looked like good news arrived: A claim began circulating on X that Kevin Hassett, director of the White House National Economic Council, had said President Donald Trump was considering a 90-day pause on tariffs for every country except China.

Market-focused accounts quickly amplified it. CNBC repeated the unconfirmed claim on air, and Reuters subsequently published a report citing CNBC. Stocks took off almost immediately.

The S&P 500 briefly erased its losses as traders reacted to the possibility that the trade war might be cooling. There was just one problem: Hassett had not said what the reports claimed.

After the White House called the report “fake news,” CNBC corrected it and Reuters withdrew its headline, sending the market in the other direction. Between 10:08 and 10:18 a.m., U.S. stocks had swung by roughly $2.4 trillion, according to Dow Jones Market Data.

The episode predates much of the current push to give AI agents more authority, but it now looks like a preview of a much bigger problem.

Speed itself is nothing new on Wall Street. Firms have used machine-readable news for years, allowing software to process new information and trade on it almost immediately. What is changing is how much more software may be asked to do before the trade happens.

AI agents can gather information from different sources, interpret what they find, weigh competing signals, and, depending on the authority they are given, recommend or carry out an action.

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